For instance. We keep evolving. Sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But it’s a process without judgment. It just occurs and we don’t really have the foggiest notion why. As my grandmother might say,’ Enough with the evolution already.’ And as miraculous as the stage of evolution we’re in might be, it also has major limitations.

We have evolutionary limitations. We all must face them. We can only see so far and with so much detail. We can only hear so much. If we could see and hear further and deeper we’d see a world that is invisible to us. Even with microscopes and telescopes. Because humans invented those things. And things humans invent have limitations just like humans.

So we seem separate from everything but we’re not. That is an illusion. Perhaps a protection. But certainly a construction of our limited brains and thus limited senses. We seem to live in this world and we do. But we also exist in this subatomic reality. Where we are not solid objects. We are made up of smaller and smaller particles jumping around constantly in movement and we construct this reality to stay sane in this reality. And who knows how many levels and dimensions and pasts and futures we are living in simultaneously. It might sound crazy to some but it’s really the sanest thing we could know. Because it’s something real but just something we can’t see. Because of our limited brains.

You might ask well, where are these Other dimensions? And in a way, that’s the wrong question. Because they’re right here. In a place we can’t see and have not created the language to describe. What ever happened right here a billion years ago and a billion years from now is happening right now. Everything that’s ever happened and will happen is happening right now. You can call it an Alternate reality. But it might be better described as the ultimate reality. Some better than this one and some worse.

The things we don’t know and just accept to survive are infinite.  Like Gravity. What is it? We don’t know. How vast and powerful or how not. We have no idea how it works on a subatomic level. It’s the weakest of all the forces but no one knows why. But we accept it. In fact not to accept it would be foolish. What goes up must come down. We just don’t know why.

We are earth centric but maybe the rest of the universe doesn’t work that way. Maybe they don’t work by the same physics the same laws of gravity the same laws of electro magnetism. It’s earthcentric to think well, we work this way so the entire vast unknowable universe works that way too. It’s a mistaken assumption.

I’ve been reading a book by a biological anthropologist named Dr Michael Masters. The book is called Identified Flying Objects. And he posits a theory with a tremendous amount of evidence and insightful and thoughtful speculation which makes a lot of sense to me and that is, Aliens are future versions of us. We evolved. We didn’t start off this way. Why wouldn’t we keep evolving? Why wouldn’t our technology keep evolving? That only makes sense.

Think of how we study past humans and hominids with the limited tools we have and now imagine that practice continuing as we continue to evolve. Our brains get bigger, our eyes get bigger, our faces get smaller as they have all along the evolutionary path and voila, aliens. But some of those aliens are human. Some of those aliens are our children. This only makes sense.

We don’t understand death or consciousness either. We guess. We don’t have a clue. This is my version of optimism.

For those that still say it’s not real let me offer this. I heard someone say recently it only takes one eyewitness to send a man to death. Yet when it comes to UFO’s and aliens there are hundreds of thousands even possibly millions of eyewitnesses for centuries and centuries from all over the world. And yet they are dismissed. Taking into account those that are faking it and those that get it wrong and those that are mistaken still leaves hundreds of thousands and thousands who have seen the same thing. Is it absurd to believe them or not believe them? This only makes sense.

And if you really believe UFO’s are weather balloons or explainable optical anomalies or natural phenomena then why hide the files? Why so secret if it can all be explained? Show us what’s in the files that makes all these witnesses for decades around the world wrong. You see, we know the answer.

It’s like Lee Harvey Oswald. If we are to believe that the Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone with a old rifle from the Texas book depository, open and shut case and forget the grassy knoll and the zapruder film and ignore the witnesses many of whom died mysterious deaths in the wake of the assassination and there is no actual conspiracy and the government and the CIA and many of our leaders weren’t involved and those are just crazy unfounded theories then why are the files being held?

Remember when trump was going to release the files. He never did. He lied. But so have Obama and bush and Clinton and bush sr and Carter and Nixon and Johnson. None of them have ever told us the real truth.

If there’s no mystery to Charlie Kirk’s murder then why hurry to pave over the place he was killed destroying valuable evidence. Or tear down the ambassador hotel where RFK sr was murdered and destroy all that evidence. Or rush to build on top of the place where the twin towers fell. Or ignore all those witnesses too who contradict the official versions of these crimes. That doesn’t make sense.

What about the true story of the assassination attempts on trump. Or How many Americans have been killed in the disasterous  invasion of Iran.

Make America great again? While all the evidence contradicts that?

And what about the media?

They’re at the White House correspondents dinner. Why do the correspondents attend the correspondents dinner? To show they have integrity? That they stand up to the president? To give each other pats on the back and awards. They are part of the system. They perpetuate the corrupt criminal system. They are not agents of change. They are irrelevant. Meanwhile Ralph Nader held a massive seminar this week about impeaching trump and he was completely ignored by the media. Because they don’t want change anymore than trump does.

Trump puts on a trump 2028 hat and instead of booing and throwing food at him, the media sit in their tuxedoes and gowns and do nothing. It’s a show, bread and circuses while the world around us collapses. People ask me all the time well what should we do. Sadly it’s true, we are relatively powerless. The most we can do is continue to play the role the press should be playing and at least telling the truth to each other because they don’t want us to know the truth but you know what, we know the truth, we’ve always known the truth, and be ready and be aware when the time comes however it manifests itself for the big change.

As I turned left at Dukes and drove up Las Flores Canyon, a very long, dark and windy road with a lack of guardrails I navigated one of the many blind curves and found myself behind a car that had come to a stop without any lights on directly in front of me in my lane. My first impulse was to blow past him and get home but I’ve been making an effort to be more compassionate and patient and committed to alleviating suffering whenever I could. So instead, I pulled along side of him. He opened his window and said, meekly and sheepishly, ‘I’m out of gas.’ I told him he picked the worst place and time to run out of gas. I asked him if he was able to pull over and he said no. I told him to at least put on his emergency lights. I would take him back down to PCH where he would have phone service to call Triple AAA.

At the moment, a sheriff’s vehicle, its lights flashing came around the curve at an obviously impatient speed and came to an abrupt stop along side me. He rolled down his window, ‘What’s going on?’, he asked tersely. ‘This guy’s run out of gas…’ I could sense the sheriff didn’t care about my altruistic gesture, just that there were two cars blocking a lane during what was quickly becoming a fire emergency. He was clearly in  disbelief that someone could run out of gas under these circumstances. And here no less. Regarding the stalled car and the driver within, he muttered, ‘Fucking idiot,’ and raced past us up the hill.

I dropped the poor soul at the gas station at the bottom of the canyon but my compassion did not extend to waiting around with him for triple A to arrive. Instead I raced back up the hill to my house, passing the same sheriff now racing down the hill. I waved in vain.

We had just evacuated a few weeks before due to another wildfire and despite having no power I hoped we could stay in the house and that the house, our neighborhood would stay out of harm’s way. I imagined lying in bed, reading or watching a movie, heading out to the car to check on our status every couple of hours on the radio, falling asleep and by morning, knowing that the fires surrounding us were safely contained. Alas.

I didn’t need a radio to tell me the bright shining light coming through our bedroom windows was fire. I got up from my bed, where I thought I’d spend the rest of the evening and walked to the French doors that faced Topanga. It looked like hell. Literally Hell. Or those photos you see of the sun. Flames, tall flames, dozens of feet high, seemingly licking at the stars, rolling quickly across the hillside. A tsunami of flames heading directly for us. I called Keely in and she immediately concured. It was time to leave.

I still assumed we’d avoid disaster and packed as if we’d be back by morning. A pair of underwear. A few photos. And important documents that would be a pain in the ass to replace. In 2018 our neighborhood had side stepped the Woolsey fire but we had to evacuate and lived in a hotel in Santa Monica until it was safe to return. After that, I decided to collect all my irreplaceable handwritten personal papers and pre-digital photos and memorabilia, not to mention, various cuts of my films and TV shows, scripts, dailies, anything that had any value on any level and place them all in a vault.

But that was seven years ago. And I had accumulated a lot of stuff since then. And I took virtually none of it that night. I had a lot of books which I foolishly thought would be easily replaceable. But without an inventory it becomes a guessing game. Camera equiptment. Larger scale art that couldn’t be so easily thrown in the back of my car, like an original poster of Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend that my daughter had given me, plus posters from all my movies from different countries. And miscellaneous memorabilia, scripts and notes, whiteboards with outlines from my most recent projects. My 50 plus year old bar mitzvah portrait and photo album and velvet t’fillen bag. The original drafts of my upcoming memoir, Comedy Samurai. As I list these things I’m still stunned by how much we lost.

And though we secured our two Malinois, Rama and Kali, who knew something bad was happening, we couldn’t take all the plants my wife had developed relationships with, cultivated and cared for. They were very much alive and died a horrible fiery painful death in the fire which my wife and I have grieved over. The cascading sense of loss has not ended and probably never will as your memory conjures up images of things permanently gone and reminds you that all things even us will be permanently gone someday.

The list of things we take for granted is endless and infinite.

I had bought my grandson, Leon, a butterfly farm for Christmas which we opened by accident. You start  with caterpillars that quickly pupate in a chrysalis or cocoon until they emerge as beautiful butterflies. But it is a very fragile process and can easily go wrong. Keely was enchanted by it and once it was out of the box it was unrealistic to repack it, so we kept it and sent Leon another one. The butterfly farm, with the caterpillars hanging and changing precariously in their cocoons and chrysalis’ came with us.

Having escaped to the valley during our most recent evacuation, but getting a sense that this fire due to high speed Santa Ana winds blowing unusually from all directions was heading east and south and west, our conclusion and perhaps only choice, was to head north, towards Oxnard and Ventura.

I had grown to hate hotels. I had lived in hotels pretty much through the early 2000’s between directing movies and commercials and tv shows in sometimes exotic sometimes dangerous foreign locations. I was ready to stay home. And now we had found the perfect house. A modest house in the Santa Monica mountains. Technically it was Malibu, but the coyotes and mountain lions and raccoons and ravens were not impressed by that. We were renting. We had been renting for ten years, had a close relationship with our landlord, Brad, and felt like caretakers of the property. As far as he and we were concerned, we were good staying there forever. I had long ago got over owning. Proudhon said ‘property is theft’ and I’d come to agree with that. I’d also read and reread that great chapter of Mike Davis’ book City of Quartz entitled Let Malibu Burn. And though I lived here now and didn’t want it to burn I couldn’t argue with his logic. Malibu had been burning for centuries, long before it was the enclave of movie stars and rock stars and Kanye and us and it can only be described as supreme hubris to build beautiful homes in the fire’s path. Daring the fire like some sort of modern Prometheus. Or maybe the building and rebuilding of the burned down houses was more like Sisyphus. Pick your myth.

So, without a choice, like some sort of affluent Joab’s, we took off down the road, heading west, for the vast agricultural farmlands of Oxnard.

We wound up in a very nice, very accommodating, very understanding chain hotel in Oxnard. By now it was late and hard to get an accurate assessment of the fire’s ravaging damage. What would survive and what would perish became a goulish guessing game for the media.

The dogs, trapped in a single room, were freaking out. We tried to assuage their fears and anxieties the best we could with as much familiarity as we could muster. But they knew better. Keely and I had tamped down our own anxiety to do what was necessary to get out and survive. But now, safe but crowded into a hotel room with no sense of what tomorrow would bring, our fears rose to the surface.

I felt my heart begin to race. Out of control. Soon, I knew I was in a full blown afib episode. The last thing I wanted was to add to this mounting terror by going to the hospital and hoped against hope that it would somehow resolve itself. It did not. We called 911 and I was taken to the local hospital emergency room by a group of super competent and comforting EMTs where I was treated by a night shift of incredibly cool doctors and nurses. I was hooked up to monitors and heavily medicated and in a few hours my heart returned to normal sinus rhythm, as they say. But I wouldn’t be returning home. Not ever. Keely waited until I was deemed healthy enough and discharged before she shared the tragic news. Our home was gone.

The next morning, back in the hotel room, we took the butterfly farm out onto our little terrace. We opened the little gate within which the chrysalis hung waiting and soon enough, the new tentative multicolored butterflies emerged, one by one, and flew off free into a world of uncertainty. Safe for now.

What if I said to you, one million dead. What pops into your head? Does that seem too much. Too unrealistic. Too crazy.

One million dead. When’s the last time you thought about it? Do you even know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Trump and Covid. Remember those days. We’ve been conditioned to forget. To erase it from our memory. Like it never happened. Did it? It’s like there was a gigantic hole that got covered over. Not filled in. The hole is still there. It’s a bottomless mass pit of pain and suffering and death. It can’t ever be filled in. So we cover it up. But it’s like a trap door we all need to step on and fall through to remember.

We talk about the holocaust. We don’t even have to say nazis or Jews. Calling it the holocaust says it all. There’s the Armenian genocide. Theres the genocide of our indigenous peoples. There’s the Gaza genocide going on right now. I wonder how the Black Death was covered in the media of the time.

But we know there is an entire industry of holocaust deniers and Gaza deniers and yes, Covid deniers.

Trump committed a crime against humanity. He should be brought to justice for that crime alone. Forget about Stormy Daniels and Jean Carroll and his collaboration of the Russian sabotaged illegal election of 2016 or the traitorous stealing of the classified files or encouraging the failed white supremacist insurrection. Where are the courageous members of congress and the senate and the courts? Where are the lawyers and organizations who stand for justice? How could they take an oath to uphold justice, to uphold the constitution, to enforce the laws and let him get away with it. It’s a painful reminder of how ultimately unimportant oaths and the constitution and laws really are. History if we survive, and that’s a big one, will remember trump as the treasonous murderous criminal he is, but it will also remember all those who failed to bring him to justice as the cowards they were and still are.

There is some debate as to whether a million people actually died of Covid on his watch or was it more like 4 or 5 hundred thousand. Like does that make it better? It’s like holocaust revisionists always get bogged down in a numbers game too. Was it six million or 5 million? That’s why the new strategy is not to report numbers at all. We’ll never know how many native Americans were wiped out in the early days of our history. We barely know how many innocent we killed in Vietnam. We never get an accurate number on the Gaza genocide. This can only happen if the media is complicit in the genocide. The media must be accomplices. If they were truly journalists it would be the headline every day instead of buried and suppressed.

Remember drinking bleach. Injecting disinfectants. Remember flooding the inside of our bodies with ultraviolet light? How bout hydroxichloroquine? And ivermectin. And if we have another pandemic, remember trump is president again and worse Robert Kennedy is in charge of public health but really in charge of public death. How do you think that’s going to go? A million might wind up being a small number.

Misinformation. Disinformation. On purpose. And people believed Trump, the post modern president despite the scientists trying to warn us. He turned people against science and that was another way to murder people. How many? Who knows.

And science isn’t infallible. It’s incredible flawed. And if you listen or read philosophers like Kuhn or Popper or Feyerabend they will tell you how science gets caught in a rigid stubborn paradigm that’s very hard to break out of and is often wrong. But at its best, when it works, it’s pursuit of truth and its methods to reach the truth when it remains open minded and not unduly influenced or corrupted or sullied or distorted by big Pharma or oppressive governments or pseudo science and the crucial breakthroughs that have arisen and continue to arise out of that pursuit represent perhaps the height, amongst the precious few crowning achievements of mankind.

Science’s imperfections should not be an invitation to quackery and charlatanism and ignorance. It is better to be right most of the time and continue to try to get it right than be guaranteed wrong all the time and know it’s wrong and exploit you and rip you off in the process.

Break up Big Pharma. Weed out the wrong and exploitative in science and its institutions. But shut down the charlatans trying to sell you miracle cures that don’t work.

On 911 3000 died and although that was a relatively small number compared to the Holocaust or covid or the vietnam war or Gaza the strategy was the same. Dehumanize the victims. They are all now simply faceless nameless victims except of course to their families. And people, fireman, first responders, civilians continue to die from the fallout of 911. Similarly, Trump’s lies and tactics facilitated many deaths hundreds of thousands after he left office. We officially hit a million covid deaths a month after he left office. Officially, and we know that’s a lie. Because it’s far more. We all know that. We don’t like to admit it. We don’t like to face it. We’d rather forget it and move in like all the mass death this country is responsible for.

And that doesn’t include the incalculable death of people losing their health insurance or the denial and ignorance and rejection of climate change. All things he gleefully supports. This is murder on an unprecedented scale. The words mass death don’t describe this devastation.

The true number of any of these tragedies including ww2 Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be known. So much has been covered up and distorted and suppressed and lied and propagandized about it. And not everybody dies at once. Some take years to die from the effects of these traumatic tragedies. And there are so many invested in diverting us from the truth, and leading us far far away from the truth.

And no one has led us further from the truth with a trail of lies than trump.

The world we live in now is the world trump wanted and covid helped him achieve it. Covid broke america and Trump exploited that moment of weakness to get him where he is today. When we think about mass death it’s often considered bad taste to think in terms of who benefitted. But that’s how who benefitted get away with it.

Who benefitted from the Black Death? Read ‘The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe’ by James Belich. There wouldn’t be a Europe without the Black Death. Who benefitted from the Holocaust? Read ‘The Holocaust Industry’ by Norman Finkelstein and see the surprisingly wide range of people institutions and governments who exploited the Holocaust for profit. Who benefits from the genocide in Gaza? Read ‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine’ by Rashid Khalidi or ‘The Punishment of Gaza’ by Gideon Levy. And who benefitted from Covid. Read ‘Pandemic Inc: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick’ by J. David McSwane

Throughout history the elite the already wealthy with their ill begotten riches have killed us. They killed our ancestors and our immediate families. Aunts uncles brothers sisters children and parents. And for what. Not a good cause. A bad cause. A terrible cause. The worst cause. Their profit. Think of how disgusting repulsive repugnant offensive that concept is. Those in charge do not care about you.

First they profit from the death. And then when they’re ready. They profit from the solution. Only to start the cycle again. Once it was cancer. Yesterday covid. Today, ecological disaster, Tomorrow bird flu. The day after, take your pick. There are so many diseases. So many ways to kill us. And they keep adding to the numbers. Microplastics. Their fault. Dirty water. Dirty air. Dirty land. Poison everywhere. They did it. And they want to blame you. Throw your can in a special bin while they pollute and poison the earth and space. Space is already fucked up thanks to Lockheed and Boeing and Raytheon and musk and many many others. We are overwhelmed by mass death. We need to control this technology not the greedy profit-takers who don’t care about the consequences. We need the information that they hide from us so we can make informed decisions.

You don’t need to give up anything. You need to control it. Take the power away from those in charge and join together to use the technology to make better decisions that benefit mankind. That’s not crazy. You’ve been led to believe it crazy but it’s not. That’s their power. To propagandize you into surrender. To accept your fates. To accept your deaths.

When a thief steals something, the idea is to not let them escape. But that is what the elite are doing. They have stolen our wealth, our dreams, our futures, our lives and now they are trying to escape. We must form the human posse and round these criminals up and put them on trial and make them answer for their crimes against humanity. And take back what they stolen from us. And public enemy number one is Trump.

It’s enough. It’s enough greed and mass death.

Trump killed America. And now he’s feasting on its corpse.

There is a quote. It might be by Frederic Jameson in the cultural logic of late capitalism or mark fisher in capitalist realism or possíbly Slavoj Zizek in one of a million places. They have all said a version of this and that is, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And that’s where we must start. With our imagination. Saddled and addled by centuries of crushing conditioning and propaganda to believe this system is the system. The only system. It’s not.

We’ve been browbeaten into believing capitalism is the only system that works. Yet somewhere deep in our minds we know the truth. It doesn’t. Except for the elite who have created their own class in the capitalist system by cheating and lying and benefitting from the capitalist systems built in inequities and unfairness. And then locking all the doors to their stolen treasures so they don’t have to share it with those that truly earned and deserve it.

We have been told that capitalism is the only economic and political system that ensures freedom for so long we can’t see the walls of the capitalist prison that surrounds us. Or even more insidiously, capitalism lets us see the walls of the prison and simply convinces us we don’t.

What is the key to changing this? Well, there are many keys because there are many locks because the elite don’t want to let you in. But the first key, the most important key is, freeing our minds. George Clinton said, free your mind and your ass will follow. Breaking free of the chains that bind us mentally and emotionally to capitalism is the first and most important step to true liberation. Try it. Here are some exercises to help you get your mind in shape to reject and overthrow this system. At first it might seem or feel funny. It might seem like a joke. But do them everyday. Like squats or pull ups. Do them regularly and suddenly your mind and imagination will see beyond capitalism. It will create a new paradigm. A new reality.

So here are some mental exercises. Remember start slow. If you feel weak and dizzy. Stop. Sit down. Have some water. Take a breath. But then as soon as possible, start again. You will see, eventually your mind will get stronger. Here we go.

So Imagine right off the bat no borders. No countries. The concept of borders and countries are made up. They are illusions created to protect the elites. Everyone would benefit from a border less world except the privileged class. They will try to tell you through their corporate produced media propaganda that it would be chaos but think, it’s chaos right now for everyone but them. Maybe we can impose a fair and equitable order where honorable people do honorable things. I know it sounds crazy but just imagine it.

And while we’re at it, finally revise history and replace all the lies and myths and distortions with truth. The foundation for any fair political system must be truth.

Imagine breaking up any corporations that have billionaires as their leaders. And because any corporation that has a billionaire as its leader is by its very nature a multi-national corporation that destroys the multi-national environment, that creates the ecological catastrophe that we all must live in, that wants you to adhere to strict borders while they ignore them, that exploits and abuses workers, imagine taxing those billionaires not just here but globally, every country that has been plundered gets their piece of the pie, without loopholes, until being a billionaire isn’t a thing anymore. You might make a billion dollars, you might have a billion dollars, but it’s not yours. You didn’t earn it. You stole it. You didn’t hold up a grocery store. You held up the world. You robbed earth. But now your victims, the people of the earth, are taking away the majority of it. And the people will decide what to do with it. And believe me if we taxed the billionaires we could use that revenue to fix the entire world. Imagine it.

Now Imagine turning the industries, the technologies, the manufacturing over to the workers who actually do the labor. The workers are smarter than Trump and Musk they just didn’t have the same unfair advantages. And making their environmental responsibility and worker’s rights including a fair wage, health and retirement benefits, and most importantly respect and dignity, an essential component of their survival. If you can’t figure out how to make stuff without incorporating no pun intended those ideas then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.

Imagine Banning money from elections in all its forms. Money corrupts purity. Money corrupts fairness. Money corrupts progress. Money smothers freedom and liberation. Money seduces like the siren’s song and leads people to make wrong bad decisions. So imagine Banning the lobbyists and special interests and since it’s only exists in America, no place else, the electoral college so that every vote is clean and unsullied and free of undue influence and most importantly, counts. Give anyone they want a half hour or an hour or 2 hours of time across all media. Imagine taking a break from the mind numbing pap that dominates tv for just a couple of weeks for information that will help us make decisions about our destinies. Just two weeks. And no more. Let us decide with minds unclouded by propaganda and advertising whose ideas make sense and can deliver on them. And who is lying? And fact check their rhetoric. So that the rich would have no advantage over the poor.

Imagine Dismantling the corporate media. There are amazing muck racking journalists and truth tellers who are relegated to fringe publications and media and then branded as marginal. Imagine if their voices could be heard like The NY Times or MSNBC. And there are creative artists too. There are artists who make tv and movies and music that are original, that say something, that move you and scare you and make you laugh and cry and think and aren’t manufactured for the sole purpose of making money for a corporation that distracts us from the truth that these are hypnotic commercials for the perpetuation of capitalism. Commodities disguised as art.

Imagine these things.

You’ve been taught to believe ideas like this are naive. You’ve been taught to believe ideas like this are stupid. But they’re not. It’s the opposite.

I’m sure you all have your crazy ideas of things you’ve imagined that would make the world a better place without capitalism and maybe kept them to yourself because you’re afraid people will think you’re crazy but they won’t. I won’t. In fact you might find out many people had the same idea. Sharing these ideas. Imaging that reality is how this starts.

Manifesting for self improvement or for enrichment has become such a trend such a fad. But what if we manifested a different form of government? What if we manifested a different form of country? What if those very words, country and government became irrelevant? Replaced by better and new words that speak to our collectively manifested reality today. So, let’s manifest a reality where the democrats and republicans like the Tories and Whigs could be tossed into the dustbins of history just as easily. Imagine that.

America is proud of its revolution. We celebrate it. We threw off the shackles of our violent colonial overlords and declared our freedom even as we admittedly ignore the genocide of our indigenous peoples and savage practice of racial slavery and the whole sale destruction of our pristine environment. But what if we had a better revolution? Imagine a better revolution. A revolution where no one is left behind except the craven and the greedy elite that lord over us now? Is the only reason that it hasn’t happened a lack of imagination? And in its wake, a new system, that we control and represents us. A classless society where everyone is truly equal. Close your eyes and imagine that world. If we all close our eyes and concentrate and focus and imagine that world really intensely, who knows what might happen.

Some might ask, how is any of this imagination possible without the reality of violence and that’s a good question.

Let’s talk about the consequences of violence. I watched an interview with the scholar Norman Finklestein, former Princeton professor author of the Holocaust industry and a staunch Jewish defender of Palestinian rights against the apartheid Israeli government. He was asked about violence and its role in change. He said, he was against it except in the most dire circumstances. He said ‘I made it. I lived. And I’m glad I lived.’ And I can relate to that. With all the pressures on us, living a normal lifespan is a very lucky very fortunate thing. It’s an accomplishment. He talked about The price Of violence. He said, generally, Bad people are into violence. And maybe generally that’s true. And good people who are drawn to violence change. So there is a consequence of violence. Not just unliving somebody. Which should have enough significance in and of itself, But in your soul/consciousness/conscience/cellular structure whatever you want to call it. Because we know there are those who resort to violence when all else has failed. A last resort. But there are those for whom violence is a first resort. Those who enjoy inflicting pain and suffering and death on others. Like trump. And for every Hitler who kill’s himself in a bunker there are dozens of Stalins and Maos and trumps who live long lives.

We know the consequences are severe for those who try to make our imaginations are reality. But there is no shortcut. Earth First tried to bring attention to the destruction of the planet by blowing up a few SUV’s and they are in jail for decades and may never get out. Remember Nelson mandala served 27 years in prison. Our jails today in the supposed land of the free, the land of free speech, are filed with nameless political prisoners who spoke out threatened the status quo and are forgotten. They were fighting these battles for you. Does trump fight for you? Does musk fight for you?

You might not remember the weather underground, who were committed to the violent overthrow of the repressive Nixon government. They committed bombings and other acts of violence and even wound up killing a few people including many of their own members. Now it wasn’t like they could go door to door for donations, or solicit funds through the mail or even get jobs. ‘Why do want this job Bill?’ ‘To pay for the revolution sir.’ ‘We’ll call you.’ They resorted to crime to raise money. And I’m not saying that’s right. But remember the American government raises money through crimes and death as well, like the Iran contra scandal, or the CIA being the largest drug dealer in the world, or assassinating democratically elected leaders like Allende and lamumba and replace them with dictators who work for us a supposed democracy in order to rape the natural resources of these countries now under the thumb of the USA, or all our forever wars since WW2. It’s crazy. If 1984 was written today, big brother wouldn’t say ‘War Is Peace’, he’d say ‘War Is Money!’ So It’s really a question of language. Of imagination. One is called a crime and one is called governance. The radicals and revolutionaries are almost always caught but the government criminals hardly ever. Let’s turn that around. Let’s stop calling people who are trying to build a fairer and more just world criminals. Then they wouldn’t have to blow up shit. They don’t really want to blow up shit. They’ve just run out of alternatives. Imagine instead of bombs and guns, our imaginations were the weapons. Where as ironically the government criminals absolutely want to commit these crimes, enjoy, relish savor committing this heinous acts and go to great lengths to not get caught by changing the laws to make it ok to commit these crimes. It’s not a crime if there’s no law against it and it is crime if they say so. That’s what has to change. Shouldn’t we be prosecuting and convicting the government criminals and corporate criminals who destroy countries, and dreams and steal all the riches for themselves. Then you’d have trump and musk in prison forever. That would be a just society. Imagine that.

The post modern president doesn’t have to be elected. He doesn’t have to tell the truth. And here we are plunging headlong into a fascist dictatorship.

In a post modern presidency, The media’s job has become suppressing the truth. That’s how they stay in business. It promotes sameness and conformity which has a psychological effect on the populace who become conditioned to believing that the same old shit is new and accepting that without protest. And the mass media manufactures the post modern president and his agenda by allowing it to dominate the media space and then when it’s the only choice and thus successful, justifies the continuation of doing it.

The post modern president traffic’s in fascist aesthetics. Fascist aesthetics rely on spectacle and you see the post modern president’s playbook use those rules. When he announces sweeping changes that ignore laws and outrages, when he appoints people to positions of power which outrages, when he changes the name of the Gulf of Mexico, or mount Denali, or wants to take over Greenland or Canada (white nations not African nations) this is spectacle. Politics as wrestling. It benefits no one that voted for him, but impacts everyone.

Fascism grows when liberalism’s economic and social policies fail and leaves a void. It exposes the lies of the liberal agenda. The biggest lie is that they even ever intended to truly eradicate these problems. But simply to make empty noises and gestures that resembled doing something about these problems without actually acting. How much wasted energy is put into this charade that could’ve been spent on actual solutions.

Liberalism in the form of capitalism creates contradictions that it has no intentions of resolving. Inequality uncertainty and precarity being perhaps most prominent.

In the midst of this uncertainty, fascism, in this case in the guise of the post modern president exploits this uncertainty which leads to fear and then says only he can solve the problem but refuses to say how and then begins sweeping changes that don’t resolve the problem but make it worse but the process has begun and now he and his cronies benefit from exploiting this fear.

As long as liberalism, or neo liberalism relies on capitalism, fascism will be a by product of its inevitable failure. This was true not only in Nazi Germany but in post war Germany and modern germany where far right movements continue to emerge during times of economic and social uncertainty.

The philosopher and social critic Theodore Adorno talks about these things in Aspects of the new right wing extremism which was written in 1967 yet rings true today. His formula for the rise of fascism is as true today as when he wrote it. And while it is not exactly the same, it is eerily similar. It doesn’t have to be a duplicate of the past. Only redolent of it. Reminiscent of it. The post modern president may not be Hitler or Mussolini or even Joe MacCarthy but he is their progeny.

While the enemy (immigrants, minorities, liberals, wokism, dei, those that stand in the way of the new neo-colonialism) is always shifting based on needs, the power remains in the hands of the same people.

Until we recognize that fascism is an outgrowth of the failure of capitalism and that’s what needs to be changed, fascism will hover over that broken system.

Deconstructionism, an idea introduced by the French philosopher Jacque Derrida says there is no ultimate meaning to any words sentences or texts. That there is no ultimate reality or ultimate truth. And while I might agree with that it’s allows cunning con men like the post modern president to step into that void and use and exploit those concepts for his own gain.

Deconstruction allows the postmodern president to outright lie and insist it’s the truth and no matter how much you argue using reason or rationality or logic, you can’t change it. So the truth if it exists becomes buried under an avalanche of lies that are now also called truth. It allows the post modern president to exploit the contradictions to fulfill his own agenda.

We’ve always had politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth and we know politics to be inherently untrue but now there’s no need for both sides of the mouth, the post modern president can express the contradictions the once emerged from both sides of the mouth as one coherent thought from the whole mouth. Especially if people are desperate and need to believe something.

This changes laws and rules and history itself and truth itself. And reality itself. They no longer exist yet people yearn for it so the post modern president provides a new version that desperate people will cling to and call it the truth.

There was a tv show on when I was a kid called To tell the truth. 3 people would come out and pretend to be somebody and one of them was actually that person and the other two were imposters. Once they revealed who the real person was everyone would laugh and applaud when the ‘real’ person stood up. In today’s version of TTTT, two or even all three might get up and insist they were the ‘real" person. And there would be no way of knowing. That is the frustrating game show we are all playing now.

We only know the post modern president because he stood up and said he was. But what if he’s not.

Nothing happens if you violate the Bible. And nothing happens if you violate the constitution. And the people who violate the Bible and the constitution have known this for a long time.

If you don’t think trump is already beyond imagining a third term, a third term, and scheming to make it a reality, you have been dangerously naive. This is a man who doesn’t believe in the constitution the Bible or any contract or laws even the ones he signs. Unless it benefits him.

The mainstream media and legal scholars and democrats stand there like it’s the 19th century. Writing articles and papers and letters and oped pieces. What do they all have in common. Paper. On paper again. Meaningless. Wringing their hands like their opinions are ever going to count. Like their opinions matter. They never counted. They never mattered. Except their public weakness ensured that the greedy power brokers could do exactly what they want and no one would stop them. You hear them say, ‘Mr trump seems to be testing the limits’. ‘Mr Trump is threatening norms’. ‘Mr trump is upending tradition’.

Even calling him Mr trump is a sign of obsequious glad handing and deference as he spits in your face. It seems like ‘mr Trump’ is testing the trajectory of his phlegm. Start calling him an illegally elected illegimate petty despot and it might have some impact. But I don’t see the NYTimes or CNN or MSNBC doing that even though that’s precisely what he is.

The Republicans have the majority in Congress the senate and the courts. What’s their motivation to play by the loser’s laws when they’ve already won?

The constitution. The rule of law. I mean we’re so far past that.

They hear him muse and wax rhapsodically about a third term and beyond and wonder if he’s serious. He’s serious. He’s totally serious. And like all these other things whats to stop him. If he ‘loses’ an election he’ll just say it’s illegitimate. Only This time he will be in the whitehouse not on the outside looking in.

Mr Trump and his corrupt criminal cronies and hapless hooligans and brain dead band of brothers are  daring the country and the world. And you don’t have to be smart to dare people and challenge them. In fact it’s better to be dumb because you don’t consider the consequences of what are you going to do about it?

Committing ethnic cleansing and genocide and other war crimes in  Gaza. What are you going to do about it?

Negotiating the Ukraine war without Ukraine? What are you going to do about it?

Screwing the working class, the farmers, African Americans, women, any minorities that voted for him with tariffs and higher prices and a stripping away of all protections designed to make things a little more fair and just. Just a little. All gone. What are you going to do about it?

Supporting a pro Nazi party in Germany. What are you going to do about it?

Having unelected neo Nazis or at least Nazi sympathizers working at the highest echelons of our own government. What are you going to do about it?

An neo-imperialistic neo-colonialist policy of simply taking over other countries like Canada and Greenland while our own country collapses. What are you going to do about it?

Replace education and knowledge with propaganda and lies? What are you going to do about it?

Placing immigrants and political prisoners and others in private prisons, call them what you want, internment camps euphemistically, concentration camps hyperbolically, but unquestionably built for profit and torture and expanding slavery. What are you going to do about it?

And worse, these are all distractions sleight of hands from the real horrors and atrocities they plan to committ. Like telling you what gender you are what medicines you can and can’t take so that more will die and get out of the way, and saving money on Medicare and social security. that’s called cutting expenditures, and what you can or cannot do with your own body. And your mind. Telling you what to think. What you can read. Rewriting history. And they know most importantly that you will do most of the work. That you will censor yourself to stay safe and thus do most of the job for them.

The mainstream media doesn’t even ask  these questions. Because they believe in the status quo and maintaining it. So they accept these premises instead of challenging them. That’s why they will never deliver the truth. And that’s why as part of system of oppression they must go too.

This is all intended to scare you into silence and complicity and paralysis. If you are scared, you will do what he says. Stop and look around you in every direction. Isn’t that what’s happening? And the media wants you to be scared too and hope you will keep running back to them for answers which they will never give you. Because that is their business model. Scaring people means higher readership and viewership and profits.

This is in no way any sort of endorsement for the democrats, for Biden or Harris. They are enablers of this tyranny. They didn’t have the balls to stop the genocide in Gaza and get out. We have been in numerous forever wars for generations around the world and Clinton and Obama and Biden just perpetuated them. Sometimes in secret. They knew this was coming and did nothing. And the democrats that had the vision and balls were silenced. And we know who they are, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Warren, Schiff and as I’ve said before they should leave the party and start a new one. If they left the party together and had a press conference announcing a third party wouldn’t you pay attention. Trump would. That would be a threat to Trump’s hegemony.

I think it’s good to streamline the government. There is a lot of waste. The pentagon has tens of trillions of dollars unaccounted for. That money could solve all the world’s problems. But that money won’t be found. Instead, that money will continue to be wasted in different ways that will enrich trump and Musk and their cretinesque cronies. And remember once you trim the bureaucracy you’ve lost a vital element in any chance of revolution because the buraeacracy controls and manipulates the information independent of the executive branch of government. Any successful revolution will require the cooperation of the military and the bureaucracy both of which are under siege by the Trump administration because they know that and want to make sure their tyrannical reign is not overthrown. If you throw out the minorities, the ethnic and gender minorities and are left with a white army and you destroy the independent bureaucracy and replace it with loyalists the chances of those two institutions playing a role in any coup d’etat becomes virtually nil.

As good intentioned as it is, I don’t believe in writing letters to your congressman or any other protests where there isn’t something scary behind it. Marches and protests only matter if they are threats of action. You continue doing this to us and we will do this to you. Are we ready for strikes and sacrifice and violence?

We have to stop worrying about equality. There will never be equality in this system. We need to focus on liberation. Liberation of all people from this system. The creation of a new system in which all people are free. And trump and the republicans and musk and also the democrats Biden and Harris that’s their system and they want to keep you imprisoned within it. Not free.

Unless trump and his fascism is what you want. Somebody wants it. Some would say a majority wants it. Perhaps more people want order than Liberty. More people want humiliation and slavery than freedom. Maybe you even secretly enjoy it. In a way that you can’t even admit to your conscious self. Not just for others, but for yourself. That seemingly perverse desire might seem counterintuitive but many philosophers and psychiatrists will tell you that it’s not. And in Trump that desire is met. He feeds that by making you think he cares about you despite all the lifetime of evidence that he doesn’t. Weird. But humans are weird. Especially today. And part of that weirdness is our dichotomy between what we think is normal desire and this other deeper stranger repellent desire. Our hate and our love our need and our want, synthesizing into an amalgam that we might dispute but our actions confirm. Like the election of trump.

If you want to understand trumps colonialist imperialist acquisitive impulse, look at Trump’s golf course and Maralago two of the whitest places in America unless you’re a slave laborer performing menial humiliating tasks there. They are both built on Native American land. The seminoles were destroyed in a series of atrocities we euphemistically call wars, but were really lopsided genocides and then the ‘settlers’ came in and ‘settled’ the land. Settlers. What a euphemism. We think of expressions like ‘settlers’ positively. This country was founded by ‘settlers’. But what is a settler? Settlers are interlopers and murderers. Settlers are colonialists who take what isn’t theirs and use violence to do it. Settlers kill women and children. Settlers are people who killed and slaughtered and stole the land from the people who lived there first.

Imagine if the workers at the golf club and maralago went on strike and refused to return unless they were given part ownership of the club, or a partnership with Trump. What if they occupied the club or the hotel like the native Americans at Alcatraz. And they would have to be prepared to be fired or removed by force  but would need to organize the other workers in the area to not accept the suddenly vacant jobs. What if they demanded full ownership of the club and hotel? Would trump negotiate or would he open fire? Would he try to force the workers back on the job. Could he? Would that succeed. Would he bus workers in from different parts of the state? Different parts of the country? Different parts of the world. Would he need to create a slave class. And would those potential workers refuse those jobs or fight back. What if the remainder of the native Americans and the workers joined together in a coalition?

Are we going to do any of these things? Are we going to strike and occupy and threaten and follow through on our threats and act outside of this irretrievably and hopelessly warped and broken  system and start alternative parties for the dissatisfied and unheard. Or are we going to let the democrats tell us there’s nothing we can do except for vote for their impotence and uselessness that got us here in the first place and maintain the status quo. I guess what I’m saying is, what are you going to do about it?

Nothing happens if you violate the Bible. And nothing happens if you violate the constitution. And the people who violate the Bible and the constitution have known this for a long time.

If you don’t think trump is already beyond imagining a third term, a third term, and scheming to make it a reality, you have been dangerously naive. This is a man who doesn’t believe in the constitution the Bible or any contract or laws even the ones he signs. Unless it benefits him.

The mainstream media and legal scholars and democrats stand there like it’s the 19th century. Writing articles and papers and letters and oped pieces. What do they all have in common. Paper. On paper again. Meaningless. Wringing their hands like their opinions are ever going to count. Like their opinions matter. They never counted. They never mattered. Except their public weakness ensured that the greedy power brokers could do exactly what they want and no one would stop them. You hear them say, ‘Mr trump seems to be testing the limits’. ‘Mr Trump is threatening norms’. ‘Mr trump is upending tradition’.

Even calling him Mr trump is a sign of obsequious glad handing and deference as he spits in your face. It seems like ‘mr Trump’ is testing the trajectory of his phlegm. Start calling him an illegally elected illegimate petty despot and it might have some impact. But I don’t see the NYTimes or CNN or MSNBC doing that even though that’s precisely what he is.

The Republicans have the majority in Congress the senate and the courts. What’s their motivation to play by the loser’s laws when they’ve already won?

The constitution. The rule of law. I mean we’re so far past that.

They hear him muse and wax rhapsodically about a third term and beyond and wonder if he’s serious. He’s serious. He’s totally serious. And like all these other things whats to stop him. If he ‘loses’ an election he’ll just say it’s illegitimate. Only This time he will be in the whitehouse not on the outside looking in.

Mr Trump and his corrupt criminal cronies and hapless hooligans and brain dead band of brothers are  daring the country and the world. And you don’t have to be smart to dare people and challenge them. In fact it’s better to be dumb because you don’t consider the consequences of what are you going to do about it?

Committing ethnic cleansing and genocide and other war crimes in  Gaza. What are you going to do about it?

Negotiating the Ukraine war without Ukraine? What are you going to do about it?

Screwing the working class, the farmers, African Americans, women, any minorities that voted for him with tariffs and higher prices and a stripping away of all protections designed to make things a little more fair and just. Just a little. All gone. What are you going to do about it?

Supporting a pro Nazi party in Germany. What are you going to do about it?

Having unelected neo Nazis or at least Nazi sympathizers working at the highest echelons of our own government. What are you going to do about it?

An neo-imperialistic neo-colonialist policy of simply taking over other countries like Canada and Greenland while our own country collapses. What are you going to do about it?

Replace education and knowledge with propaganda and lies? What are you going to do about it?

Placing immigrants and political prisoners and others in private prisons, call them what you want, internment camps euphemistically, concentration camps hyperbolically, but unquestionably built for profit and torture and expanding slavery. What are you going to do about it?

And worse, these are all distractions sleight of hands from the real horrors and atrocities they plan to committ. Like telling you what gender you are what medicines you can and can’t take so that more will die and get out of the way, and saving money on Medicare and social security. that’s called cutting expenditures, and what you can or cannot do with your own body. And your mind. Telling you what to think. What you can read. Rewriting history. And they know most importantly that you will do most of the work. That you will censor yourself to stay safe and thus do most of the job for them.

The mainstream media doesn’t even ask  these questions. Because they believe in the status quo and maintaining it. So they accept these premises instead of challenging them. That’s why they will never deliver the truth. And that’s why as part of system of oppression they must go too.

This is all intended to scare you into silence and complicity and paralysis. If you are scared, you will do what he says. Stop and look around you in every direction. Isn’t that what’s happening? And the media wants you to be scared too and hope you will keep running back to them for answers which they will never give you. Because that is their business model. Scaring people means higher readership and viewership and profits.

This is in no way any sort of endorsement for the democrats, for Biden or Harris. They are enablers of this tyranny. They didn’t have the balls to stop the genocide in Gaza and get out. We have been in numerous forever wars for generations around the world and Clinton and Obama and Biden just perpetuated them. Sometimes in secret. They knew this was coming and did nothing. And the democrats that had the vision and balls were silenced. And we know who they are, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Warren, Schiff and as I’ve said before they should leave the party and start a new one. If they left the party together and had a press conference announcing a third party wouldn’t you pay attention. Trump would. That would be a threat to Trump’s hegemony.

I think it’s good to streamline the government. There is a lot of waste. The pentagon has tens of trillions of dollars unaccounted for. That money could solve all the world’s problems. But that money won’t be found. Instead, that money will continue to be wasted in different ways that will enrich trump and Musk and their cretinesque cronies. And remember once you trim the bureaucracy you’ve lost a vital element in any chance of revolution because the buraeacracy controls and manipulates the information independent of the executive branch of government. Any successful revolution will require the cooperation of the military and the bureaucracy both of which are under siege by the Trump administration because they know that and want to make sure their tyrannical reign is not overthrown. If you throw out the minorities, the ethnic and gender minorities and are left with a white army and you destroy the independent bureaucracy and replace it with loyalists the chances of those two institutions playing a role in any coup d’etat becomes virtually nil.

As good intentioned as it is, I don’t believe in writing letters to your congressman or any other protests where there isn’t something scary behind it. Marches and protests only matter if they are threats of action. You continue doing this to us and we will do this to you. Are we ready for strikes and sacrifice and violence?

We have to stop worrying about equality. There will never be equality in this system. We need to focus on liberation. Liberation of all people from this system. The creation of a new system in which all people are free. And trump and the republicans and musk and also the democrats Biden and Harris that’s their system and they want to keep you imprisoned within it. Not free.

Unless trump and his fascism is what you want. Somebody wants it. Some would say a majority wants it. Perhaps more people want order than Liberty. More people want humiliation and slavery than freedom. Maybe you even secretly enjoy it. In a way that you can’t even admit to your conscious self. Not just for others, but for yourself. That seemingly perverse desire might seem counterintuitive but many philosophers and psychiatrists will tell you that it’s not. And in Trump that desire is met. He feeds that by making you think he cares about you despite all the lifetime of evidence that he doesn’t. Weird. But humans are weird. Especially today. And part of that weirdness is our dichotomy between what we think is normal desire and this other deeper stranger repellent desire. Our hate and our love our need and our want, synthesizing into an amalgam that we might dispute but our actions confirm. Like the election of trump.

If you want to understand trumps colonialist imperialist acquisitive impulse, look at Trump’s golf course and Maralago two of the whitest places in America unless you’re a slave laborer performing menial humiliating tasks there. They are both built on Native American land. The seminoles were destroyed in a series of atrocities we euphemistically call wars, but were really lopsided genocides and then the ‘settlers’ came in and ‘settled’ the land. Settlers. What a euphemism. We think of expressions like ‘settlers’ positively. This country was founded by ‘settlers’. But what is a settler? Settlers are interlopers and murderers. Settlers are colonialists who take what isn’t theirs and use violence to do it. Settlers kill women and children. Settlers are people who killed and slaughtered and stole the land from the people who lived there first.

Imagine if the workers at the golf club and maralago went on strike and refused to return unless they were given part ownership of the club, or a partnership with Trump. What if they occupied the club or the hotel like the native Americans at Alcatraz. And they would have to be prepared to be fired or removed by force  but would need to organize the other workers in the area to not accept the suddenly vacant jobs. What if they demanded full ownership of the club and hotel? Would trump negotiate or would he open fire? Would he try to force the workers back on the job. Could he? Would that succeed. Would he bus workers in from different parts of the state? Different parts of the country? Different parts of the world. Would he need to create a slave class. And would those potential workers refuse those jobs or fight back. What if the remainder of the native Americans and the workers joined together in a coalition?

Are we going to do any of these things? Are we going to strike and occupy and threaten and follow through on our threats and act outside of this irretrievably and hopelessly warped and broken  system and start alternative parties for the dissatisfied and unheard. Or are we going to let the democrats tell us there’s nothing we can do except for vote for their impotence and uselessness that got us here in the first place and maintain the status quo. I guess what I’m saying is, what are you going to do about it?

We needed some things to begin the long process of rebuilding our lives and keeping alive our muse so we drove to a shopping center near where we were staying and while my wife went into a store to get some supplies I noticed there was a Barnes and noble and I decide to go in and wander. I hadn’t been in one for a while. A bookstore that is. I do most of my reading on kindle these days. Beyond the stacks of books I discovered many things forgotten by the society. The environment itself, the idea of the bookstore. It was life affirming. I’d forgotten how meaningful it can be just to wander around and browse. The verb, to browse. Not only that, but every body in the bookstore was really really nice. Nice people. The clerks and salespeople and the customers and the browsers. We as a society have kind of forgotten what it’s like to be around groups of nice people. People who are interested in books and thoughts and words and ideas and language. Quiet people. People without avarice or ambition or rapaciousness. People who don’t want or need or crave power. Not people shouting inanities or obscenities or racial slurs. or just being loud to each other, on their phones, on lines, at the fast food place. Murdering any semblance of intellectuality with their actions.

After that, we went to a local library, where they had a used bookstore inside. They were selling some of the most important books in literature, books that changed the world, for 25 cents, 50 cents, a dollar. Where else can you change your life, your mind, for 50 cents?

And again, everyone was exceedingly nice. And quiet.

In a bookstore, or library, there is no privilege. There are no elite. Bookstores and libraries are egalitarian. Everyone is equal. Being in the bookstore and the library made me feel better. It gave me hope.

What happened to civilization. When reading books and ideas and words and language were respected. They were a priority. Remember when the society was heading in that direction. Towards higher intelligence. We’ve let the empty headed vacant greedy and selfish sons of privilege the brutes and fools take over. People like Bush and trump who’ve never read a book in their lives. It limits your world view and makes it easier to be cruel and indifferent and inane. Less compassionate. It makes you stupid and that’s what our leadership is today to use an anti-woke term, stupid. If you need a dose of goodness go to a bookstore. Or a library. If you need a dose of intellectualism go to a bookstore or library. Surround your self in ideas and people who appreciate them and understand how precious and fragile they are. Pay tribute to a dying breed. Because we all know bookstores and libraries and then books are disappearing like some rare species from a different age.

I lost all my books in the fire. Like Fahrenheit 451. The act of having a thought and then getting up and walking over to one of the many bookshelves in our house and finding a volume that speaks to that thought that illuminates that idea was something I had taken for granted. But as John Lennon said you don’t know what you got until you lose it. But metaphorically we all live in Fahrenheit 451. A time of idea burning. Of word burning. And language burning. And thought burning. Replaced by the inarticulate grunts of the brutes and bullies.

We’ve ceded control to the trumps of the world.  You know why. Because we’re nice. But If you’re nice don’t give up on being nice. Don’t become cold and heartless and indifferent to your fellow man.

I’m not some kind of social animal but I know in a bigger way a more important way we need connectivity. Trump and the brutes are trying to break that down. To isolate us from each other. To divide and conquer. But collective consciousness and universal love are powerful forces. They can’t be broken down or disconnected unless we surrender.

Being well read is no longer an asset. It’s a liability. That’s a shame. I remember a commercial from when I was a kid. It was a psa for reading. There was a bunch of kids in a coffee shop arguing a point. And a kid walks in with a dog eared paperback in the back pocket of his jeans. He listens for a moment and then takes the book out and starts to explain and clarify and everybody stops arguing and listens. They learn something and find common ground. Thats how you change hearts and minds and lives. Not with weapons and threats and violence. But with a book.

Let’s be honest. We’ve had a revolution. We’ve had a coup d’etat. Right wing terrorists have taken over the country and the government thus legitimizing themselves which is what happens when ‘terrorists’ are successful. The language changes. Yesterday’s terrorists are today’s government leaders.

They used many tactics. Some old, some modern, some unprecedented but very successful including intimidating the country and breaking its will for 8 years. So let’s talk about revolution, overthrows, coup d’etat. Why they succeed and why they fail. Hypothetically of course. Theoretically. Be it far from me to advocate violent revolution, even though we’ve just had one. For the time being we still have supposed free speech, so we should exercise it while we can.

You might ask, where are the left-wing terrorists? Why isn’t the left armed, and organized. The left must find causes that bring it all together to fight against. What is our Vietnam? We know who our Nixon is. The left, the opposition must see the big picture and not allow itself to split off into separate agendas until the big picture is accomplished.

You will see attempts by the Democrats eager to be reelected, eager to keep their pockets filled, continuing moving towards the middle, moving towards the right, trying to cooperate, curry favor, with the new administration. Do not trust them. Their agenda is the same. Increase military spending increase lobbying increase tax breaks for big business, increase war, which will only benefit them as much as it will benefit the Republicans. When you have nobody on your side, what side do you turn to?

There are those that say delusionally now that trump is elected he won’t have to follow through on the harsh uncompromising rhetoric of his campaign and rallies. Why not? With a majority in the house and senate and a stacked Supreme Court and a manufactured mandate from the now dominant right wing media what’s to stop him?

The elements to overthrow a dictator or fascist totalitarian authoritarian leader rests on a few components of the modern state apparatus. One element is a fully developed permanent standing military. No surprise there. Another is the professional bureaucracy. That might seem like a surprise. The modern bureaucracy has full access to all the information needed to be disseminated manipulated or suppressed to accomplish its goals whatever they may be. Further, this permanent bureaucracy is quite separate from the totalitarian leader. They operate quite outside the confines of the autocrat’s rule. Laboring anonymously but carrying great weight collectively. That’s why Trump is committed to destroying it. Trump has already attempted once to drain this ‘swamp’ but failed. It’s not that easy. Even for a dictator. Because without the foundation of the bureaucracy the state collapses.

Historically the military and the professional bureaucracy have worked together to commit a palace coup. An inside job. These are often successful because they draw their power from unseen underestimated forces like bureaucrats and office workers. Not just soldiers.

That is why trump wants to drain the swamp and replace it with mindlessly loyal lackeys who will do his bidding. Easier said than done. The bureaucracy has created myriad ways to protect its existence. If Trump is successful in sweeping out the autonomous bureaucracy that is not beholden to him and replace them with flunkies, it will take away one of the key components of any potential coup detat. Because we are so ethnically and politically diverse this becomes a daunting task.

As far as the military, we know, there is a disproportionate population of loyalists operating within the arm forces. But we don’t really know what percentage do not fit into that category.

In both cases the bureaucracy and the military in this country are vast enough that there are independent pockets that are either unpredictable or can’t be controlled.

Because both the military and the bureaucracy are rigid systems, they behave predictably. This can help the dictator control the actions of those two systems, but also leaves open the possibility of disruption from within those systems.

The chaos of the coup can exploit the rigidity of the bureaucracy during the coup itself and then rely on the rigidity of the bureaucracy to make the coup sustain.

Of course, a well disciplined and practiced bureaucracy and military may go about their business and inadvertently resist any sort of radical change in a place like the United States, where those two entities have been rather consistent over long periods of time.

Our bureaucracy and military are so vast that it is truly impossible to know before hand what level of discipline rigidity potential proclivity or propensity for chaos and change actually exist within them.

The military if its philosophy falls somewhere between the people and the government and is cogent enough and the leadership feels they know better than either can engineer a coup itself. We see this a lot in African nations perhaps most famously in Sankawa’s democratically driven coup in Burkina Faso which eventually led to his assassination. Because of the implications of military rule here it seems it would be less popularly accepted.

A question we must ask ourselves is, are we interested in changing out the leadership or changing the entire system?

Civil War is no longer a binary system so there are no longer two sides vying for the same goal. Today’s civil war is a fragmented affair with multi faceted, not necessarily related aims or agendas and thus with no real end ever in sight. As the sides change and align and divide you have a perpetual war where a deposed leader or system actually has a chance to regain power. Almost like a basketball playoff round robin. You can lose a game and still win the tournament.

A more modern and realistic version of the civil war scenario is the setting up of a new state within the larger state. Perhaps you’ve heard of the state of Jefferson consisting of Northern California and southern Oregon. Or North Vietnam or Kurdistan in Iraq. Pakistan from India. There have been many. These are splinter states which carve out their own borders and declare themselves a separate state or country from the main state or country they reside within.

In the end the most successful coup comes from within the government when an essential but perhaps even small group of the government is able to wrestle control away from the main government. But that main government must be weak enough or vulnerable enough or unprepared enough for such an action and in America that is rarely the case.

Popular movements seem a less likely scenario these days. The Arab spring was a good example. A revolution happened except for the last phase in which change is instituted. It was in that moment of hesitation that the military stepped in and quelled the rebellion. This also relates to the urban revolution where if it becomes successful it boxes itself in with no where to go. Essentially cornering itself.

America does not lend itself easily to an outside coup. Say Mexico decided to invade Washington. Or Russia decided to invade Washington. They would likely fail. Now maybe aliens would succeed. Instead we have a confluence of outside influences trying to imbalance the system and make it more vulnerable to overthrow by a group friendly to an outside government.

In this country until a sizable majority believe the government is illegitimate the chances of a successful long term sustained revolution is negligible. The best recent example is January 6th. Yes many people felt the election was stolen. Yes they felt the Biden administration was illegitimate. But the vast majority of people didn’t and order was quickly restored. Now we’ve had an election in which a majority have voted for the coup leader. They were able to seize power through the means provided them by the constitution. Thus rendering the need for violent Revolution void. These same people who supported the January 6th revolution used their constitutional right to change things and exercised it. A bloodless coup.

And any attempt to overthrow will likely be repelled because of that. There will have to be outrageous egregious breaches of freedom for a sizable enough group to engineer anything resembling a successful coup.

These people who decried the corruption and illegitimacy of the system wound up believing in it and living by it and now have used it as prescribed to regain power.

What we will more likely see in this country, whether Republicans or democrats are in charge, are outbreaks. Violent perhaps but short lived isolated and quickly suppressed. The governments reaction even if overwrought and out of proportion will probably not generate enough mass response to elevate it to coup threatening status.

We are an unusual country. We have the veneer of stability but below it lies chaos. We are the wealthiest nation in the world yet we have amongst the highest rates of disease illiteracy death rates hunger and poverty amongst wealthy industrialized nations.

Because of defunding and deprioritizing education we have a semi-literate class. Those who can read words but lack the comprehension to truly understand them or the levels that they speak on. So they are more susceptible to what they are told and without a frame of reference more likely to believe it. They may even suspect it, but after all what choice do they have but to obey or cooperate or believe. And they retreat to the safety of the tribe or the clan.

We keep being told about infrastructure. But what is infrastructure? Oh, well repair the bridges and roads that have already broken down because we didn’t maintain them properly in the first place. We’ll fix the broken road or highway that should’ve been fixed along time ago so you can continue to use fossil fuels to get across them. Vote for that bill. Does the border wall count as infrastructure? What if you don’t want your taxes used for that? Too fucking bad.

Who pays for the lifestyles of the ruling elite. We do.

We have agitators on the right and they have succeeded in taking power. But where are the agitators on the left?

People died in the George Floyd protests. But ironically it was an excuse for the police to kill without controversy even more black people. The protestors only destroyed property which we know is more valuable than minority life in this country. And we no longer know or can tell who is actually agitating. Are the protests organic or are they instigated by outside agitators. We have forgotten about the George Floyd protests because the media has chosen to focus on j6 and there too we’ve only gotten the sensationalistic simplistic superficial perspective not the truth or the whole story.

And we saw on Jan 6th a vast majority white rebellion that the police also a white majority were placed in the precarious position of flee, fight or join.

And on some level, the government has made sure that we are all semi-literate in some form. How many of us understand taxes, how they are calculated or spent. Yet taxes are how the government insures that everything you think you own is in truth owned by them. What’s the test of this? If you own a house and don’t pay your taxes, what happens.

The expression industrialized nation is about to become as antiquated as industrialization itself. It is no longer relevant to how our economy works and we will never return to that form of economy. We are in a post modern dystopic techno-feudal economy with a whole new set of rules. Or perhaps o rules at all.

I have been examining and reading about coups and overthrows and revolutions. And I recommend it. In a sense, the right wing had a successful one. The left wing has no agitators no organization no unifying principles and the majority of middle class white people are content with the status quo so the chance of radical change seems remote.

So we will survive. I’ve survived 2 terms of Nixon Reagan and Bush. And in retrospect Clinton Obama and the democrats betrayed the leftist ideals when they were in power. So what sort of world will be left?

And what of the billions that have it worse. That’s a global problem that always has been with us, is with us and will always be with us. But can a there ever be a global revolution?

The democrats have exploited these underdeveloped but resource rich nations just like the republicans in our name. The cia, our military, the oil companies are all deeply embedded in third world nations.

It’s a sign of how okay the democratic elite are with trump that they have done nothing, before the election or after to counteract his rise his power. It will benefit them as much as the republicans elite. They will exploit it and leave the democrats who actually believe in the cause behind as they have always done. Power is more important than fairness or justice.

And we can’t expect the working class or the poor to rise up unless there is gross injustice or economic collapse. Remember the wealthy profit from economic collapse too. Every Wall Street crash has made someone richer.

I would allow the state of Jefferson to form and secede from the union, but only if what is left of California does the same. We could create a truce between them. Neither nation-state would have anything to gain from the other. And live independently of the federal government. Have free democratic elections where every vote counts. Where there are no parties. And no single ruling entity like a governor but a council made up of many voices.

If the democrats had been more bold, going back to Gore and Clinton and Obama and of course Biden-Harris, they could’ve created a new status quo made up of these disparate parts but synthesized to seem like a whole, like a consensus. And they could have created the propaganda to sell this coalition to the masses. But they had enriched themselves, despite their protests and rhetoric with the elements of the existing status quo which is essentially Republican.

The democrats had a chance with Bernie Sanders. He presented a radically different vision but what was rejected by the so-called mainstream democrats. Of course today mainstream democrats have become losers and have no leverage whatsoever in the equation mainly because of their timidity and betrayal of the loyalists who would’ve have stood by them. Who would have united behind them.

That leaves a coup to be enacted by forces outside of the Democratic Party and again, there is no organization that currently exists that is working toward that goal. Instead, the republicans have amassed that large consensus by selling themselves as the overthrow of the status quo even though we know in the end that will be proven a lie. But larger percentages of minorities and women, have bought into it for now. Their betrayal, their regret will come later.

You notice how quickly the republicans have moved to shore up their agenda. Before the democrats can even catch their breath. Cabinet member names, policies announced months before they actually take office. That is key. Don’t give the dissenters a chance to voice their concerns.

The republicans spent time and money and propaganda to create sub-parties within the police and military and encourage the growth of para military forces and militias. The democrats spent a billion dollars on a failed presidential campaign.

Trump’s policies will fail on many levels, even be disasterous, whether it’s immigration or climate or tariffs but who is out there with a strong voice to counteract it. The democrats have lost their credibility. Obama, the Clinton’s, Biden and Harris, who believes anything they say? Are you going to follow them into the breach? Of course not. And all legitimate voices of dissent have been quashed miminalized relegated to the fringe. The end result is, it doesn’t matter if trump fails, there is no opposition to it or him.

People say it was a fair election. But was it? Yes people might’ve voted for trump, seemingly without coercion. But was it? What would make people vote against their own best interests? Why do we assume that hypnotism and telepathy and drugs and biochemical weapons and mind control of all sorts, of mysteriously insidious means didn’t play a role? Why are suddenly so naive? By election night the hypnotism was complete. The timing of the conditioning was perfect.

People will accuse me of being paranoid. Fanciful. But remember the constant barrage of stop the steal. The election was rigged. That mental assault didn’t end on Election Day. That propaganda war continues even now. And to suggest that there is something amiss will leave you vulnerable to charges of subversion and worse. You will be prosecuted as an enemy of the state. Or you’ll just be made sick or die and disappear and along with it your protests.

When you talk about these things you are an enemy of not just the republicans but their partners the democrats who support the lies and benefit from the lies. Their corruption and lies and betrayals to the people of the United States who counted on them was purposeful. They knew that Americans who believed in them fought for them would be betrayed by their lies and abandon them and that’s just what happened.

Where are the heroes? Where are the JFK’s and RFK’s and MLK’s and Malcolm X’s? Oh yea that’s right, they were murdered. And replaced by neo liberal opportunists like Gore and Clinton and Biden and Obama and Harris and RFK Jr. Men and women with no moral core or integrity. The set up was our entire history and the punchline is today.

Rather than round up the Cheney’s and Bushes and punish them as the blatant war criminals they are, which I think the people would have applauded the democrats embraced them.

The answer to the new right wing fascism is not more neo-liberal slightly left of center liberal friendly corporatism but radically revolutionary violent radical left wing action. We are past discussion or debate. Hypothetically of course.

*******

With the billionaires and the oligarchs and the racists and the Nazis and the mindless and stupid ignorant and incompetent and greedy and powerful and the obsequious timid cowardly servile fawning toadies and syncophants in charge, ruling what’s left of this country, this illusion of a country this will culminate in catastrophe.

But catastrophe doesn’t happen with the snap of a finger. It’s a process and we are in the middle of it. And as horrible and violent and cataclysmic as it has been, it is not by any means the climax of the catastrophe.

Try as I might, I can’t see a satisfying resolution to the current state of affairs. It’s not about trump or musk though of course it is. But it’s about bigger themes that have been left unattended for too long. And the fragmentation of any resistance that might at one time been effective.

Turns out the revolution has been televised. In fact We have had a series of revolutions. Covid. The election of trump. And now the fires. Not to mentions the apocalyptic floods and drought, the extreme cold and heat, the mega hurricanes and tornadoes, the winds and earthquakes, which have literally remade society in ways we don’t even fullly know yet. More so than any riots or armed revolt.

The west side, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Malibu, these are perceived and perhaps rightly so as the enclaves of the liberal elite, and now they have been gutted. That is a victory of sorts for the right. They have managed to destroy the liberal elite without firing a shot . So then the question becomes, and it has not been resolved yet who is responsible for this conflagration for this cataclysm that resulted in one conclusion. The destruction of liberalism progressivism inclusive thinking and philosophy and beliefs in one fell swoop. Wealthy liberal celebrities were left scrambling to grab what valuables they coulda head for safety just like the Palestinian Syrian and Iraqi refugees we watch on our big screen TV’s and think damn I’m glad that’s not us. This is disaster capitalism on a new level. Rather than destroying poor desperate communities as we’ve done in Palestine and elsewhere we tried something new. We are now destroying wealthy affluent privileged ones, but for the same reasons and the same results. The corporations, the corporations behind the power companies behind the construction companies the home builders the real estate companies the insurance industry and the politicians they have seen this horror and this violence And this cataclysmic change, and this climactic change and this climate change as an opportunity an opportunity to rebuild these communities and profit from them. We have created a new homeless class in Los Angeles already a bastion of homelessness, the wealthy homeless. But of course, every revolution has its victims, and they are always the same, the same poor, the poverty stricken and the working class poor, the undocumented, the persecuted victims, those barely hanging on as it is who will now fall off the map of life with Los Angeles. Now maybe those innocent people should not be in that position to begin with but this is how they relied on feeding their children, paying their rent and living some semblance of a normal life and now that too has been violently removed. Think of the extreme right’s goals in terms of immigration in terms of deporting undocumented workers in terms of stopping DEI and inclusion and shutting down the wealthy liberal establishment. Then look at what happened to the west side of Los Angeles. That is all been accomplished with a metaphorical match. Do you believe this was a big accident? You’ve already heard on the news how insurance companies and others have stopped using the term act of God because of its absurdity. We know at the very least there is no God to act. But then who did act or who didn’t act because not acting is an act in itself. We heard arsonists get blamed. Teenagers get blamed, but we know from previous fires that the power companies, the home builders the real estate companies the insurance industry and others and the corporations behind them are responsible. who are they? who owns them? who controls them? It almost doesn’t matter whether it’s a purposeful act or not. an act of this size cannot be considered an accident so ask yourself who are the real arsonists in the scenario. I think we know the answer.

*******

Are you ready to die for your country? Are you ready to be killed for your country? Welcome to the future and the end of America.

Well, the show is over, that is the election, a pageant, a contest, and guess what. The world is still fucked up. The media would have you believe that trump as president is no big deal but you know better. If he is allowed and not resisted , he will further rob you of your freedoms regardless of gender or age or ethnic or racial derivation. We’re all affected. Only the criminally wealthy will benefit. Only the environmental rapists will benefit. And as we know, those are often the same people. And it will be at our expense.

One painful irony we must face. For all the conflict about the presidential candidates and who will be president next in a very important and crucial sense, it is merely a show, a magic trick, a sleight of hand, a distraction from the real problems that face the country and the world. For instance, neither candidate had any sort of real plan for reducing carbon emissions or inevitable climate disaster. Drilling would increase, extreme weather would increase, glaciers will melt, seas will rise. Neither candidate had any real plan for stopping the genocide that is taking place on our dime in so many countries around the world except to continue it.  Either had a tangible plan, or steps to take to make this country itself, more equitable for all people. None of that. A show. Nothing but a show.

There have been many reasons cited for the trump victory. It seems the saddest and truest is that this is a racist, sexist white majority country. And we desire a white autocratic patriarchal leader. Even a felon, a liar, a convicted criminal over a black woman. So let that land. Let that settle. And before you say, well I’m not a racist, I’m not a sexist, accept that as a country, we are.

But even if Harris had won, the problems we face, the problems that are mounting everyday, from all sides, all issues, were not about to be fixed because we now know more than ever the democrats and republicans are the same. Craven politicians trying to protect their asses and line their pockets. With the exception of AOC and Bernie Sanders. And they have no power. They are merely tokens. That’s the system that we accept and represents us. Why do we allow it? Have we given up? No. I believe we have been tacitly forced to surrender to this system with the only solution to destroy it overthrow it and that’s not about to happen anytime soon. Trump has a majority in all branches of government. And the military and police and security and intelligence organizations have lined up to carry out his reign of  fascist vengeance.

We have no plan to eradicate or even examine the right wing white supremacy that grows in this country.  In fact their power will now grow and expand. We have no plan to curb military spending. Instead we will increase it, expanding our mass death machine and the profits it brings to the weapons manufacturers who also make your cereal.  And we will abandon any plan to change the economics of this country so that genocide is not so profitable. In fact the economics of this country will now shift into a greater disparity between rich and poor, white patriarchy and everybody else. We will be less fair less compassionate and relish and codify and institutionalize our cruelty. Our plan for the homeless is to let them die or put them in private prisons for profit. We have no plan for the impoverished for the sick or the unhealthy except to thin the herd by taking away the government help that kept them barely afloat. They will sink and drown now.  We have no plan for the micro plastics and the fossil fuels and the toxic waste and the continuing pollution of the earth except to increase it without regulation. We have no plan to curb the large corporations that control us more and more and profit is the main goal. We have no plan to change our philosophy from that, from profit above all else, which inevitably leads us to a more dehumanized world. These are things that people from all walks of life, all economic groups, all genders and races and ethnicities might actually even agree upon, but the powers that be would never change because they are beholden. The politicians and the leaders are beholden to these large corporations. And as long as the system works the way it does, as long as it costs $1 billion to become president how can they not be beholden to the people that have the money. He/she or they that pays the piper calls the tune.

I’ll be honest, I’m in a quandary. Election Day is coming up but my quandary is not who to vote for between Harris and trump. I will tell you today that I will never vote for the fascist racist rapist pig trump.

I wish the obvious slam dunk answer was Harris and it may still be, but that’s my quandary. I’m not sure. And I’ll tell you why and see if you can relate. Or not. Many of you don’t remember vietnam where we the largest military power in the world entered a small rural country with no real army or defense and called it a war and tore the country apart scorched it with napalm death and destruction committed atrocities that still haven’t been reported killed as many hundreds of thousands of men women and children as we could including our own soldiers dragged it on for years hoping to squeeze this little country to death and have our way with it and still lost the war. American veterans are still damaged from that war.

Our methods have gotten more subtle. We don’t show you the atrocities and horrors and war crimes that we committed and we don’t send American troops to fight if we can help it. We let others fight our wars with our weapons so American troops don’t die. That’s what happening in Israel where the state of Israel has become our puppet our surrogate and collaborator in the genocide of the Palestinian people.

Some people don’t like the word genocide. They try to argue that what’s happening in Palestine is not a genocide. State sponsored mass murder. Destroying hospitals, homes, starving children. Hurting and maiming and killing the innocent. They like to argue the semantics of the word. How many dead qualify as a slaughter, an atrocity, a genocide. We know the answer. Some would prefer not to admit it. Current events answer it daily. History will definitively answer that question. There is so much evidence an over abundance of evidence, from the world courts, the UN that we simply choose to ignore, that the point of this war is not to protect the state of Israel who have been reduced to sadistic prison guards with a license to slaughter but to wipe out an entire people called Palestinians. Erase them from the present, the past and the future. Yet we know from our own sordid history, It’s never going to work. No matter how many are starved wounded and killed no matter how many women and children, Israeli will not prevail. Just like we didn’t prevail in vietnam. But we continue to arm Israel to the tune of 2pm billion dollars just since October 7th, against a poor impoverished population already living in an apartheid or prison state.

The Palestinian people will never give up like all colonized people in so many countries will never give ip until they achieve liberation. Nor should they. And some day in the future when they restore themselves like Vietnam ironically they will thrive again. Rebuilding is good business and America knows that too. That’s when America will become Palestine’s partner.

But back to my quandary. Who to vote for. Living in California there doesn’t seem to be much of an issue that Kamala will win this state. And again anything to make sure trump, who openly supports this genocide so he can access the Palestinian coast and build resorts is driven once and for all from the public consciousness.

But at what point do liberals progressives leftists put their collective foot down at the Biden administration’s propping up of Israel’s mass death parade. At,what point do we put our foot down about corporate profits from weapon sales. At one point do we put our foot down at our addiction to oil,which is another secret agenda, our agenda in this slaughter. Kamala has said nothing about stopping any of it it if she’s elected. And obviously Neither has trump by the way just as he hasn’t really said anything specific about any issues except tariffs.

So who to vote for. Or to vote at all. how do we dare call ourselves liberals or progressives or leftists when mass death against the innocent is being performed in our name. I’m sure there are many with a similar crisis of conscience. As long as it costs a billion dollars a billion dollars to run an American presidential campaign than any third party candidate who would be taken seriously would have to be plucked either from the same class as a musk or trump or someone who has proven their trustworthiness to that class like Biden or Obama or Clinton and presumably Kamala Harris.

The last third party candidate with that economic clout was Ross Perot. And when he got to popular, too much of a threat, he was destroyed. Special interests dominate our election and our politicians agenda and they have very little to nothing to do with our concerns.

Erasing trump and his family from the public scene is a must. And Cornell west and Jill stein can’t and won’t do that. Only Kamala Harris can. Erasing robert Kennedy’s and all he represents, out of control unearned privilege wealth entitlement from the public consciousness is essential. Only Kamala Harris can do that.

So do we vote Kamala Harris and take more radical action on the issues once she’s in office? Force her hand on Israel and Palestine and the rest of the Middle East and fossil fuels and the Supreme Court and women/s rights and health care and worker’s rights and work harder for a solution in Ukraine and stop the wealthy from dominating our lives and question military spending and space spending and private equity unchecked.

This is how we are coerced into perpetuating a system we don’t believe in and know doesn’t work. Is the answer to spend the next four years after a Kamala victory raising money for a legitimate third party? Do we work to change the laws? Or as some advocate do we overthrow the whole thing with the use of political violence? Burn it to the ground and start over. They all seem like pipe dreams don’t they. Meanwhile The problems never get fixed. They get worse. They expand. They increase. Things aren’t better. They will never be better and they were bad to begin with.

Make America great again? Every person of color every minority, every Jew and Muslim every black person who descends from slaves, every Hispanic person who ran from one kind of political oppression to something much worse here, every Japanese American who had relatives in detention camps, every woman who knew someone who had a back alley abortion knows America was never great.

Suffering is the first noble truth so we suffer. Some accept it. Some resist it. Some ignore it. But we all suffer.

So I guess I’m curious. What do you think. What will you do?

Ever since World War II, there has been a contingent of fascists who wish to take over the government. Some have leaned towards Nazism some have leaned towards totalitarianism or authoritarianism some are simply extreme right wing. Some white supremacist. Some are all of the above and there are amongst them, those people who also want Trump to win. They know that Kamala Harris will not achieve their agenda and will resist it, but that Trump will go along with it whether he believes it or not. It’s immaterial to him.

They have tried to destabilize the government because that makes the government vulnerable to overthrow. This is ongoing. There is no period where the extreme right wing fascists are content with the government. Trump will try to please them but they will probably be disappointed by him or not wait for him but use him to change the country which has always been teetering once and for all.

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At one time, the class struggle was simply the ideological battle and occasional real battle between the working classes and the ruling classes. But we have watched this shift from exploitation of the masses to the alienating and fragmenting of the masses through identity politics. This has led to women, blacks, gays and other minority groups splintering so that we now have many groups of oppressed with sometimes very different agendas.

Terrorism arises out of state violence. That’s what we will see in a new Trump administration. And they will keep these groups separate so that they will turn on each other for prominence and dominance in the pursuit of rights.

Unless all the oppressed support all the oppressed then you will continue to have a splintering which makes the individual groups more vulnerable. Look at the Palestinian cause. While many of these oppressed groups sympathize with the Palestinian cause, they are not motivated enough to join and make it stronger. Is that an American phenomena? If this was an American problem would it be different? Until that changes the state has no motivation to shift its agenda as it was forced to do in Vietnam. Vietnam was unique in that it was happening overseas but affected young Americans very directly.

Is it wiser to fight for gun laws or to arm the oppressed as the radical right wing white supremacist groups and militias have done. And can this be done above board or must it be done illegally. How many of the guns of the white supremacists are legal arms with no modifications. And they are allowed to operate quite openly until again, a small splinter group, smaller and smaller takes it to the next level and attempts a coup. This is also unacceptable to the state and their cherished status quo even though the state is far more tolerant of the white majority.

During the 70’s there was a global radical left wing movement. Every country had organizations known to the government the media and the people. And they carried on political violence in response to state violence. But for a variety of reasons, some external some internal as well as a changing world they were destroyed and replaced with imaginary organizations like antifa they were used to demonize leftist political action and because the propaganda and conditioning has been so insidiously effective it’s has primarily worked. Scaring and alienating even those that might be sympathetic.

Original Palestinian liberation organizations were secular and purely political. They were a greater threat to Israel. So much so that Israel set up Hamas, funded it, to undermine those organizations, making them easier to alienate from those that might be sympathetic as they watch the overkill in the Middle East unfold. .

As long as the American government is considered to have some degree of legitimacy it will be almost impossible to mount any sort of significant violent resistance to it from the very people who need to rise up. But that can all change with trump.

Most radical violent white supremacist groups are rural and rural guerrillas have historically had more success very much due to the terrain and environment. Rural environments are vast hard to navigate and easier to hide and regroup as opposed to the urban guerilla movement. Think of NY or Chicago or La. Think of how hard it is to get around just to go shopping or get to work, think of the police presence. Success in urban centers has come more easily when individuals, Kascinski, McVeigh, carry out the actions alone rather than in groups. Even if they are supported and abetted by others.

Urban guerrillas, individuals, can only strike and retreat. They can not generally parlay their political violence into territorial or political gains.

The problem with urban guerrillas is if they are successful and their movement grows, and becomes a mass movement it is harder to be clandestine and easier to infiltrate and undermine and destroy. This is why you will always see informants within the ranks of urban guerrillas and why it is much harder to destroy a rural guerrilla movement.

Security technology and the stripping away of rights and freedoms through legislation has made it increasingly difficult for radical groups to carry out their political agenda. Buying or stealing arms, infiltrating government buildings etc has become almost impossible without detection. As a society we have given away our freedoms for security and most seem to prefer that trade off.

Budgets were increased, sophisticated and subtle tactics were developed including media manipulation and an entire security and intelligence industry working in sync with the government evolved. Repression increased but most never noticed.

During the sixties and seventies when civil rights came to the forefront a professional managerial class was created or emerged. A liberal bureaucracy in government to protect those rights. And that seemed like a good and pure idea at the time. But over time they became just another tool of capitalism, swallowed up by the system, dedicated to maintaining the power structure of the status quo while protecting themselves and their existence and as a result the working class just became a empty phrase. Now part of the absurdity of this is who is the working class? We’ve discovered that the working class has many ethnicities races levels of income and poverty and can’t be generalized about. We know that many in the so called working class support the merchant elite like trump and musk who are merely the front men for the real elites who control all the money and decisions in this country and most of the world, like black rock and vanguard. It’s ironic because The political theorists who observed this phenemonen and labeled it the professional managerial class and who talk about the working class are academic elites who have no absolutely no connection to the working class, weren’t raised among them, don’t hang out with them, don’t know any actual working class so there is a certain condescension to their assessments.

What do you think is going to happen if trump deploys troops against protestors on domestic soil. You think that will go smoothly. Or will there be violence. Do you think parents will stand by and watch their children be killed for their beliefs. Ironically nothing may bring this country together faster than employing violence against their own citizens. Soldiers will be killed. Students will be killed. innocent Bystanders will be killed.

Even if Kamala Harris wins there will be violence. But violence by a small group of people who are disgruntled and resentful is different, no less potentially devastating but different than the military inflicting violence as a policy. That seems to be our two choices.

I recently saw this billboard in the San Fernando Valley. It had a classic image of Lincoln and the words failed failed failed. And it looked like it had been defaced with graffiti but that might’ve been part of the billboard. And no author or artist or organization is credited. But I thought wow what a provocative question.

When you look at our country today. The divisiveness and hate. And the deep rooted lingering racism which is a holdover from the founding of our country, but which we fought our bloodiest domestic war over, when we look at a prison labor population made up of a disproportionately large percentage of young black men, a country where the black man, woman and child are at such a lethal disadvantage medically, economically, educationally, where abject hopeless inescapable poverty and its consequences still reigns and white supremacy, and it’s consequences though abhorrent repulsive and repugnant to the majority of Americans, still rules this country, one must ask, Did Lincoln Fail?

Is Lincoln our first national martyr or is that just more anti-critical race theory anti-historical nonsense? It’s like when I hear people say, Jesus died for our sins and I think well, there’s still sin. More sin than ever. So Jesus died for nothing. It’s the same with Lincoln. Lincoln was murdered for our racism. He was sacrificed to make this a more perfect Union. But it’s a far more imperfect union than ever. Not that it was good then Or ever.

Then there’s Lincoln the myth vs Lincoln the reality. As we look deeper into American history, we see how much mythologizing clouds the accurate retelling of America’s story. How these myths are so far removed, sometimes barely remotely connected to any version of the truth.

So Lincoln wasn’t some ‘ah shucks’ guy. Some country bumpkin. ‘Hey, man look I’m president. I walked 5 miles to school and wrote on the back of a shovel.’ Lincoln was a smart, ambitious man who craved and desired power, like all presidents. Who had ego and narcissism and arrogance and delusion and sociopathy amongst his traits like all presidents do.

And let’s dare ask the big question. And this question has loomed over the crossroads of American history. Did Lincoln even free the slaves? No. That was just hype.

The civil war was first and foremost a battle over which paradigm America should follow. The southern feudal agrarian culture fueled by slave labor or the newly developed industrial culture of the north which also had slaves, and slave labor and relied on the slave labor of the south as well. But the value of black people and the fate of slaves and slavery was only an adjunct issue, to this larger economic issue.

Remember, the biggest bargain in capitalism is slave labor. Capitalism needs slavery of one kind or another to function succeed and profit. So today perhaps people don’t work for free. But they work for nothing. Because even if they’re paid, it’s not nearly enough to live independently, even though your boss may be a billionaire who’s raking in record profits on your labor. And this isn’t just China or Russia or North Korea or Southeast Asia. Since we benefit from slave labor around the world and still practice it here, this is America’s reality as well.

We are all using prisoners and children and minorities and migrants to provide essential goods and services for all of us. For virtually nothing. Ask someone trying to get by on the minimum wage. It’s too controversial to call it slavery. So let’s call it virtual slavery. But it is what it is. And when the workers here become too expensive we find even cheaper labor in countries where slavery, servitude, of one kind or another, are rampant.

Here in America back in our first centuries of existence, neither the north or the south for the most part, even considered black people fully human in relation to white people. And sadly, to jump ahead to the present, we all know of people who still believe this. A lot of people. But now this racism and distorted belief system isn’t just in the south. It’s everywhere.

Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation under the guise of saving the union, but in reality, the agenda was to save capitalism and to ensure that going forward into the future, America would be an industrial capitalist society. The old ways of the south stood in the way. It was an inefficient system. And slavery was a part of that. If the old agrarian feudal system was to be destroyed, the institution of of slavery must be destroyed with it. For many reasons and yes, human rights was one but only one reason and not the primary reason.

Here’s a quote from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address to congress, in 1861: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” 

By the way, that’s a great Lincoln impression. Trust me.

It was also calculated that freeing the slaves would guarantee that those newly liberated super fucking angry ex-slaves would join the Union army which they did. And these newly freed slaves did that with the express purpose the fierce determination to fight for and protect their rights as humans and as citizens. Little did they know their descendants would still be fighting to gain those rights and even losing some almost 200 years later.

Military and political considerations, the fate of capitalism. Sheer shameless opportunism. These were the forces driving Lincoln’s decisions. And I’m not suggesting he had no qualms or doubts about the enslavement of other humans, or a belief that all humans should be free. But all of our early leaders espoused that, while they owned and beat and raped their slaves. And though it’s true, Lincoln didn’t own slaves, he was in no rush to end slavery. And yes while it’s true, he did actually come from humble beginnings, once he was president, he had the 19th century so called progressive version of slavery, black servants.

So, Lincoln as a human, may have found slavery to be a moral crime which he abhorred. But as a politician, his feelings were quite different. And that’s in keeping with all America’s leaders. Even to this day. With certain obvious exceptions.

Lincoln did not believe on a fundamental level that this country could ever work with or accept the integration of a free black population. Was he right? Is that true? You may point to progress. We’ve had a black president and a black vice president. But both have been subject to and hamstrung by racist white supremacist majorities in the congress and senate and every other American institution while being criticized for being ineffective and forced to absorb racist personal attacks like questioning their citizenship.

So progress such as it is comes with a price. And that price is violent regression. We must point to the horrific underreported covered up multitude of dark bloody episodes in American history like the Tulsa massacre, the Tuskegee experiment, routine sterilizations of black female inmates, violent segregation in every segment of society, from education to politics to culture to professional sports,

Jim Crow laws, Sundown Towns, the infiltration and destruction of any and all black movements by the government, the FBI and Cointelpro, the disproportionate arrests, conviction and imprisonment of black men by a rigged system, making these men essentially political prisoners regardless of their crime,

lynchings, the largest drug cartel in the world, the CIA, addicting America’s poorest neighborhoods and destroying black communities, man made fossil fueled big oil big everything climate disaster capitalism decimating poor communities with apocalyptic weather and leaving more lives destroyed and people homeless without recourse,

Emmett Till, George Floyd, the empty promises of the 13th amendment, the unsolved murders of black leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Huey Newton and Fred Hampton. Even if there are patsies rotting in jail, those crimes are unsolved, even though we all know who did it.

And remember the founding fathers who said, all men are created equal, made an exception for black people. They could legally be considered less than equal. And they could be owned. And with the weird exception of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the founding fathers had slaves. Many of them. Dozens. Hundreds. So it starts right there.

Obviously I’m not black but that’s part of the problem. We shouldn’t need a black history month. This is Our history. All of our history. This is American history. I hesitate to say we need to own it, because ownership is part of the problem.

See, this is Critical Race theory. This is what hasn’t been taught to entire generations but now instead of hiding the truth, it’s time we know it and acknowledge it as truth and teach the truth and not the lies in school.

This ongoing battle is part of Lincoln’s legacy, but also his prophecy. Instead of integration which he never felt would work, he believed in reverse colonization. He wanted to send black people back to Africa.

And part of Lincoln’s original plan was to give reparations. But not to black people. Not to the newly freed slaves. No, he intended to give reparations to slave owners for their loss of property. Human property.

Emancipation was a political strategy to tip the balance to the union in the civil war by accepting the influx of freed slaves escaping from the south and eager to fight for the north and destroy the racist south where they had been imprisoned for generations. Imagine that anger. Imagine that PTSD. Black people have been fighting a losing war against a racist monolith. Our own government. That anger, that terror, that collective memory lingers too.

And here’s a little known fact about the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation itself actually freed very few slaves.

The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, all of which were loyal to the Union yet still practiced slavery. ‘We’ll support the Union, but we’re not giving up our slaves.’ Missouri at that time actually had two competing governments; one loyal to the Union, and one still loyal to the Confederacy. Not that different than today.

The Emancipation Proclamation also made exemptions for regions of the Confederacy that had already come under Union control in hopes of gaining the loyalty of white people in those states. ‘Look as long as you acknowledge that all men are created equal, you can keep your slaves.’ Shameless manipulative hypocritical compromised politics once again winning out against any truly morally just agenda.

And in the end, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t immediately free one single enslaved person, as the only places it applied were places where the federal government still had no control to enforce it—which was what the confederacy in 1863 whom the union was still at war with and who would rather die than give up their way of life which included the subjugation, torture, rape and murder of slaves for profit.

And further, although Lincoln never lived to see it, murdered by a white supremacist conspiracy I might add, he had no plan for post war reconstruction or national unification.

It wasn’t like the south was just going to lose the war and say, ok you won, whatever that means, and we will immediately change our ways. And it still hasn’t.

So, was Lincoln a failure? Did Lincoln fail? You could certainly argue on some level he did. He believed that no matter what, America should remain a white man’s country. And his actions freed very few slaves but perpetuated the brutal racism that still goes on today.

But the failure was also ours. White America had no appetite for freeing the slaves. The blood, the carnage, the economic cost, the division and maybe most of all, and this is so true even today, the inconvenience. Change requires destruction and violence and expense. Change is a hassle. And for white people then, just like today, they are essentially ok with the status quo. Change is scary.  And white america is still scared of black liberation.

So, do we actually believe that all humans are created equal? Do we believe everyone deserves the same rights? Do we? Because if we do, then it doesn’t matter whether Lincoln succeeded or failed. Our success as a country as a concept as an idea is not up to Lincoln. It’s up to us.

Xxxxxxxxxx

Did Lincoln fail. Well yes he did. Sort of. The truth is more complicated than the mythology.

Though Lincoln argued that the founding fathers’ phrase “All men are created equal” applied to Black and white people alike, this did not mean he thought they should have the same social and political rights. His views became clear during an 1858 series of debates with his opponent in the Illinois race for U.S. Senate, Stephen Douglas, who had accused him of supporting “negro equality.” 

In their fourth debate, at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858, Lincoln made his position clear. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed Black people having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites. 

‘It’s unlikely that if Lincoln had not been assassinated, America’s racial history would have been a better one. The conflict between state sovereignty and federal authority, differing interpretations of the Constitution, and the belief, deeply embedded in white America’s psyche and laws, that the United States was exclusively a white man’s country would have persisted, regardless of Lincoln’s longevity.’

https://lithub.com/abraham-lincoln-breaking-down-the-myth-of-a-perfect-president

http://www.blackagendareport.com/truth-about-abraham-lincoln-his-own-words

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/

https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-racial-discrimination

https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html

Did Lincoln Fail? #lincoln #slavery #juneteenth #history #emancipationproclamation Please watch the entire 16 minute video on my YouTube channel, Larry Charles Projects (link in bio)