Another routine murder by the police

The institution of the police has been a failure from the beginning. They were designed from the start as agents of repression of working people and the poor. They cannot be reformed; they can only be abolished and replaced by something new and better. Possibly a citizen corps which rotates on a yearly basis as a matter of public service. So that every citizen knows what it's like to be a peace officer.

Trump vs Biden

Three tangible differences between Trump and Biden:

1. Biden is more of a warmonger. His Senate record shows 100% support for war, every chance he got. Trump seems a bit nervous about war, at least some of the time. But Biden is unequivocally for it. If he's elected, we can expect a lot more war deaths. War against Venezuela and Syria will be virtually guaranteed. Biden has made that clear.

2. Although Biden may de-emphasize the most blatantly racist elements of Trump's policies, the media will flat-out ignore virtually EVERYTHING that Biden does. Things may not be quite as bad for many minority groups, but there will be a blackout on abuses - which means that many of the people who've been abusing children in cages, for example (cages which Obama and Biden BUILT, mind you) will be able to escalate that abuse with impunity.

3. Biden stole our votes. There is no greater crime imaginable against democracy. For all his shittiness, Trump didn't do that. Biden and the DNC undermined the democratic electoral system and rigged the primaries a second time. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm damned if I'm going to give my vote to the people who've made it clear that they have nothing but contempt for the democratic process - and for all the causes that I support.

One final point in which Biden and Trump are effectively the same: climate change. With his "middle ground", fossil-fuel-friendly approach, Biden has made it overwhelmingly clear that "nothing will fundamentally change on climate policy. Which means a death sentence for humanity. Trump and Biden are cyanide and arsenic. When offered a choice between the two, the sane response isn't to look for minor harm reduction. It's to yell "FUCK NO!" and fight like hell.

If we want to live, our only option is revolution. Voting means nothing any more. Vote if you want; like masturbation, it's meaningless but harmless. But the age of mass protest is coming. Get ready for the revolution.

Truths

The rich are eating us. It should be the other way around.

They're not our leaders. They're our jailers.

The Worst President Ever?

There is ALWAYS someone worse. And what's more, every time you accept the supposed lesser of two evils, you make it inevitable that there WILL be worse.

When Reagan was elected, everyone said "This is insane. He's the worst President there could ever be."

Then Bush was elected. And people said "HE'S the worst President there could ever be."

Then Bill Clinton was elected and sold the Democratic Party to Wall Street. Nobody said that he was the worst except some Republicans, but the damage he did to our democracy was irreparable.

And then we had George W. Bush. And people said "Oh, NOW we get it. This is beyond insanity. He's surely the worst President we could ever possibly have."

Then Obama was elected. He was charming and well-spoken, and he built cages for immigrant children and gave himself the legal right to spy on and drone-kill Americans secretly without a trial. His cabinet was virtually all Wall Street people who looted the economy and crushed working people. But nobody said that he was the worst, because he was charming and black and he was a Democrat. Still, the damage he did to our democracy was irreparable. And Wall Street gained still more power over the system.

Then Trump was elected. And now people are saying "Oh, God, what kind of crazy world are we living in? Surely this is the worst President there could ever be. No one could possibly be worse."

To which I reply: "Oh yeah? Just wait."

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

The Cliff

Joe Biden supporters talk about incremental change. They point out that it took decades for us to get to this point, and that it will take decades, maybe forty years, to reverse the damage.

But we don't have 40 years. We don't even have ten. In 10 years we pass the point of no return. Hundreds of millions or billions of deaths become inevitable, and at that point the struggle for survival and the resource wars will make any sort of sane human civilization impossible.

It's not pleasant to contemplate, but the only way I see the human race surviving at this point is via a worldwide revolution. And I honestly don't know if that will happen.

But it's very clear that the powers-that-be, including the DNC and the RNC, will do everything they can to maintain the status quo as we head over that cliff.

* * *

I can't get away from that ten years. Realistically, we need to make profound changes in the world's economy and society as quickly as possible - within five years or less, there must be fundamental change on a level we've never seen before, or the odds of human extinction are huge.

I can't get that out of my mind. I can't let it go. For Sebastian's sake, if nothing else. The DNC and RNC have made it INCREDIBLY clear that they won't allow the fundamental change we need, as long as they exist. Hell, Biden literally SAID "nothing will fundamentally change" to his Wall Street bankers.

I'm not voting for Trump. But to me, it's clear that we've reached the point where the "lesser evil" is still too evil to accept. Human extinction isn't something I will agree to, no matter which puppet of the oligarchs is offering it.

And although I've voted all my life, I've finally reached the point where I'm convinced that voting is truly meaningless. I'll vote anyway, I suppose, out of habit. But it's painfully obvious that voting isn't going to save us. The ONLY way that humanity survives, as I see it, is mass protest and revolution.

Luckily (?) the greed of the 0.01% is creating a hothouse environment for exactly that. With unemployment reaching Great Depression levels, conditions are ripe for the sort of anticapitalist revolution that FDR only barely managed to forestall. Since the DNC successfully blocked our modern equivalent of FDR, it seems inevitable to me that there will either be a revolution...or we'll have the most technologically advanced and brutal authoritarian society that humanity has ever witnessed.

For a little while. Until the Earth will no longer sustain human civilization or life.

Sigh...talking and thinking about this stuff depresses the hell out of me.

* * *

I'll never vote for Trump, and voting for him is stupid if only because the DNC would be perfectly happy to have him re-elected; he's good for their campaign donations, and the oligarchs who own both parties don't mind Trump.

But I am convinced that the DNC defrauded their primary voters twice now. That they stole MY vote. Trump didn't do that; Biden and the DNC did, and they did it to make sure that they could keep looting the planet, killing off humanity, and keeping billions of us locked in desperation and poverty for whatever remains of our lives.

That makes it personal. I EXPECT the Republicans to be mad dogs; that's what they are. But the DNC was supposed to be a counter to that, as was the media. Both sold out to the same oligarchs who own the RNC. To paraphrase Treebeard:

"[They] ought to know better: they DO know better. There is no curse in Elvish. Entish. or the tongues of Men bad enough for such treachery. Down with [the DNC]!"

I won't vote for Trump. But I understand those who will.

And if it's any comfort, it doesn't matter anyway. Our votes are meaningless, and the differences between Trump and Biden are comparatively minuscule.

* * *

The problem is that as a privately-owned corporation (and owned by one of the world's richest oligarchs, to boot), the First Amendment doesn't apply to Facebook. And the structure of Facebook allows faceless moderators and admins to wield censorship and bans like a club.

Worse still, Facebook is very troll-friendly; I don't know how many people remember 2015-2016, but the DNC hired David Brock and his "Correct the Record" to send armies of trolls in to every progressive and pro-Bernie group. None of those groups survived, as I recall. I wrote an article about spotting trolls and the techniques that trolls use to take down groups in the hope that it might help people to resist them, but it didn't stop me from being banned by a troll from Krystal Ball Rising.

The thing is, there's no real alternative to Facebook. Well, there's Reddit, but they're even MORE susceptible to troll attacks than Facebook is, thanks to their "voting down" algorithm; all the trolls have to do is get enough of them into a group (or enough accounts, anyway) to vote down posts and make them effectively invisible.

Outside of Reddit and Facebook, all you've got are ghost towns. Google Plus had some activity going on, but Google killed that off. So I could go to some small social media site and write (as I do on Blogger), but nobody will ever read what I write and it will never spark any conversation.

We have free speech only insofar as it's controlled or nobody hears it. That's not freedom at all.

 

Banned by a troll

This is a follow-up to "How to Spot A DNC Troll". This morning the Facebook group I'd written it for was gone. Posts I'd saved from that group were gone. Notifications on comments and posts I'd made there were likewise gone. When I looked up the group, Facebook reported that it didn't exist.

But it turned out that I'd been kicked out of the group and permanently banned. I checked with a mod who's a friend, and she couldn't find out what had happened - and she was afraid to ask other mods for fear of being banned herself.

That's a classic development in troll attacks. Odds are that a troll weaseled into a mod position, and got rid of me for posting the article. At a guess, the group really will be gone within two months.

Collected comments

I should have been recording my political comments here all along. it's only a matter of time before they start getting censored; I've been receiving warnings from Facebook.

Given the tinderbox political situation, a crackdown by the oligarchy on political speech online is inevitable.

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Sorry, but I don't buy it. The DNC has made it unbelievably clear that they would rather destroy everything than allowed Bernie to get the nomination.

And Bernie has made it clear that he is always going to knuckle under to them. Face it, he's out of the picture.  It's painful to watch Bernie supporters trying to come up with some feeble, tenuous reason to believe that he might save us all somehow.

He's not going to save us. We are going to have to save ourselves. And you know what that means, even if it scares you.

#Revolution.

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I've been advocating organizing outside of the political system for decades now. The political system as it is now is a killing field for opposition to the system.

Leaderless groups which provide mutual support and (dare I say it) FUN are our best approach. That's why Occupy caught on fire with the public.

The system has made life very grim and scary. A movement that offers people a way to support each other and have fun could go viral incredibly quickly.

Call it a party. To oppose the Parties.

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During the Great Depression, the Communist party had marches and protests demanding jobs and relief for the people. Thousands of people spontaneously joined those marches. The situation today is extremely similar; unemployment is actually higher than it was then, and neither of the mainstream parties is offering anything close to a tolerable social safety net.

Mass protests and riots are inevitable, under the circumstances.

Get ready for them. Stockpile material for big signs. Assemble your protest gear - the cops won't be any less brutal this time. Learn how to live stream video securely from your phone - the mainstream media will ignore most of that stuff, put gripping footage of police brutality will go viral anyway.

One way or another, opposition to this corrupt system is about to explode. We need to be planning on how to make the most of that.

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When you are offered a choice between cyanide or arsenic, refusing to choose is the only sane choice. The DNC blatantly rigged the nomination process for a second time to force a corrupt corporate rapist down our throats - a "Blue Trump".  That's not a choice at all. Under the circumstances, the oligarchy is forcing us to the only alternative we have to human extinction: #Revolution

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Check the records. Joe Biden is more of a warmonger than Trump.. He pushed the Iraq war through Congress, causing The deaths of thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children. He has supported every war that he ever had the opportunity to vote for. He was also a sponsor of the bankruptcy bill, v which ruined millions of Americans.

To top things off, he undermined democracy and the Constitution by conspiring with the DNC to rig the Democratic nomination process - nullifying the will of the people.

In virtually every way, Joe Biden is so much like Donald Trump that the to are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

For more reasons why Joe Biden doesn't deserve your vote, this thread is an excellent resource:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/2369136416640563?view=permalink&id=2558974750990061

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Got a mask? Of course you do. That means you have the start of a protest gear collection. And you NEED that, because the era of mass protests is beginning.

Covid-19 has changed America forever. Employment levels are never going to go back to what they were. After the second wave of infections and deaths hits, most small businesses will not survive. A huge number of jobs will go away and never come back.

The oligarchy has made damn sure that we will not get the kind of social safety net necessary for people to have a bearable life - much less a decent one. The similarities to the Great Depression are remarkable. A huge population of unemployed workers living on the ragged edge of desperation is a recipe for social unrest, mass protests, and revolution.

So save your masks. Any mask will defeat facial recognition. Look for masks that are effective against tear gas and smoke. If you can, get a respirator or a gas mask. Expand your collection with some goggles or other eye protection. A hard hat could save your life. If you don't have a first aid kit, get or make one - and have a portable one to take with you to protests. There won't be any warning before the protests and riots begin, and you'll really want that gear when the day comes.

The #Revolution is coming. Be ready.

----------

Once again the system has successfully deflected populist progressive energy. They can keep this up for a long time. The DNC controls the democratic primary system absolutely. Recognize that simple fact.

The planet is running out of time, and so are we. Within 10 years, climate change will have passed the point of no return. After that, hundreds of millions or even billions of deaths will be inevitable. The odds are high that civilization will collapse, and our species will become extinct.

The oligarchy owns the political system. We can vote however we want; it won't matter. Just as the DNC controls their primaries, the duopoly controls the general elections. The Green party will never be allowed to reach the 5% threshold. Neither will any other third-party. The oligarchy is determined to see humanity destroyed rather than give up a shred of their power. They know that once they make any concession, they risk an enraged population waking up and tearing them to pieces.

So vote if you wish. But NEVER make the mistake of thinking that voting will be allowed to accomplish any meaningful change. You want to live? You want your children and grandchildren to have a future? Then you have only one option.

#Revolution.

Get yourself ready. Network with your neighbors. Have a first aid kit for your house, and a portable one as well. Get protective gear & sign-making equipment for the mass protests, because they are coming. More people are unemployed than at any other time in American history. The oligarchy is determined to keep them desperate and hungry. They are making revolution inevitable.

Get your shit together. Stock up on essentials. Research protest techniques - our brothers and sisters in other countries are developing some amazingly effective ones.

When the day of revolution comes, we won't have any warning. We don't know what the triggering event will be; all we can know is that the people will eventually reach a breaking point. When that time comes, we need to be ready.

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Personally I despise Democrats more than Republicans because A) it's the Democrats whose primary opponents are the progressive movement, and they show it with unabashed hatred and contempt, and B) you expect the Republicans to be rabid dogs. But Democrats were supposed to be the people's protectors. Although anyone who has done much study of the issue knows that in fact the Democrats are the ones who saved capitalism.

Come to think of it, Bernie would have saved capitalism. So with any luck, we will be able to bring it down now that he's out of the picture.

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I think the DNC has proved (twice now) that politics should not be our main avenue of attack. The oligarchy owns the political system, both parties; they are NOT going to allow someone like Bernie to get a major-party nomination, and they damned well won't allow any third party to ever reach the 5% threshold. It's clear that votes are not being reported accurately or honestly. And since both the DNC and the RNC are privately-owned corporations, there is absolutely no way that we can take them over.

But that's not our strength, anyway. Our strength, as you put it, is numbers. And our numbers are increasing every day, thanks to the oligarchs themselves. The unemployment rate is now higher than it was during the Great Depression, and those numbers are only going to go up after the second wave of Covid-19 hits in the fall. The elite will not provide even the minimum social safety net necessary to allow the people a bearable life, much less a decent one. As the people suffer and grow increasingly more desperate, they will move - out of sheer necessity - towards revolution.

We almost had a revolution during the Great Depression. FDR bought it off and saved capitalism with the New Deal. Bernie was capitalism's last chance in this era, and the DNC killed that chance. So now revolution is all that's left to us.

We can organize politically, too - but we have to recognize that our primary tool are the mass protests which ARE going to start happening, more and more often. We need to be part of that. We need to prepare. Developing demands. Making local connections. Stocking up on necessities and protest gear. Materials to make signs and banners. When the Communist Party started marching during the Great Depression, thousands and thousands of ordinary unemployed Americans joined them. We need to take a page from their book.

Apart from that, all I can say is that a leaderless movement seems to be the way to go. Leaders are just targets for corruption or destruction. Small local groups for mutual support could spring up all over the country (and the world), and network loosely. If those groups offer fun as well as support, they could go viral incredibly quickly. Call it a party (in the fun sense) to oppose the Parties.

What do you think?

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Here's the thing: the DNC would far rather lose the next TWENTY elections rather than allow Bernie to get the nomination. And Bernie has proved that he'd rather play ball with the DNC than fight them. So all this is a waste of time.

We need to focus on mass protests and breaking the system from the outside - not on a hopeless attempt to reform an utterly corrupt and oligarchy-owned system from the inside.

We have ten years before the planet reaches the breaking point. Then hundreds of millions or billions of us will die, and the resource wars will begin. Pissing away those ten years on hopeless political struggles is just a dumb way to commit suicide. We need to be working NOW to bring down the system and save the planet.

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[I'm often flamed for warning that Ro Khanna is a deep-cover fauxgressive whose ultimate loyalty is to the DNC and the oligarchs.]From an email from Steve Spinner to John Podesta:

"Ro Khanna has been a loyal supporter of Hillary Clinton unlike Mike Honda. Ro worked with Amy Rao and Jonathan Mantz to help Hillary Clinton in 2008 and before that supported HillPac. He did a number of fundraisers in the South Asian community for Hillary Clinton throughout 2008. He also traveled to Pennsylvania, Iowa, Texas, and the Every Vote Counts rally for Hillary Clinton in 2008."

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/40072

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The entire subject of citizenship needs to be completely re-evaluated. I think we tend to look at things from the default assumptions of the current system; that's a mistake, as the current system is a failure in so many ways.

Our system and society are examples of how NOT to live a human life or form a human society. They've brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Each and every aspect, every concept, needs to be regarded with suspicion and care.

If people live and work here, they should have an equal voice in our government.

----------

It seems to me that if they're living under our laws, they should have an equal voice (and responsibility) in making those laws - or electing those representatives, or whatever. Personally, I think we need to work towards a society in which every member has the time and education to represent themselves effectively. Representative democracy has been a recipe for corruption, far too often.

I'm reminded of T.H. White's The Once and Future King; specifically the passage about the wild geese. From the sky, there are no border lines. No states, no countries. And we know now that every part of the world shares the same fate. What happens across the sea affects us here, and vice versa. No part of the world is untouched by our actions. And that interconnection will only increase with time...unless everything falls apart.

What's the concern about giving people the vote? Will they abuse it to advantage foreign nations over the US? It seems to me that that's already a widespread problem (*cough* Israel *cough*). We need to break out of the dead-end assumptions of the old system and consider entirely new approaches.

Giving humanity the education and thinking skills needed to govern themselves wisely is not only the ideal of fairness; it's a desperate necessity for human survival.

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Again, assumptions. Are taxes the only way to fund government? And non-citizens pay huge amounts of taxes RIGHT NOW, yet are denied the vote.

At the same time many corporations and billionaires pay NO taxes - some even get huge gifts of our tax dollars - and yet control our election system with brutal rigor. The control votes on a scale none of us can imagine. So where's the logic in that?

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Don't take stuff like this too seriously. The DNC has proved twice now that your vote means NOTHING - they will happily cheat progressives over and over again, and nobody can stop them. They've proved that YOU CANNOT REFORM THE SYSTEM FROM WITHIN - and by so doing, they've made revolution inevitable.

So get ready for that. We're reliving the Great Depression, in many ways. That means mass protests and revolution, since the DNC has decided to stop our equivalent of FDR from saving capitalism this time.

Get ready. It's coming.

#Revolution

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Remember, although the oligarchy can buy out virtually any politician, they can't buy out the people. Or rather, they could, but they never will. They did it last time with FDR, but Bernie was their chance to buy off a revolution this time and they wouldn't do it.

There's a limit to how much a people can suffer. The 1% doesn't seem to believe that. They think they could keep screwing us, and we will just take it like docile cattle. I believe they are wrong, though. The people are reaching a limit, just as they did in France and Puerto Rico. And when that happens, things will change very very quickly.

So be ready. Get your protest gear collection together. Have sign-making material available in your home. Stock up on necessities. Keep a portable first aid kit ready to go. Make connections with your neighbors, because you will need all the friends you can get when the revolution comes.

The oligarchy has been re-creating the conditions of the Great Depression. More people are out of work than ever before. Last time, America came within a hair's breadth of a socialist Revolution.

This time we're going to go all the way.

#Revolution

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What in the past forty years gives you ANY reason to believe that politics is in any way affected by the will of the people? The DNC successfully thwarted the popular vote for the Democratic nomination twice now - and not only was no one punished, they actually proclaimed in court that they had the RIGHT to pick the candidate in a smoke-filled back room. *And the court agreed*.

If you seriously think that anything we do will affect the outcome of the election...you're right. But not in the way you think. If voting could make a difference, it would be illegal.

Trump, Biden, third party...it doesn't matter. The DNC controls the Democratic nomination process *absolutely*. The duopoly and the oligarchs who own them control the entire general election system, in all meaningful ways. And they own the media, as well - so they can do whatever they want and the people will never know. Enough of the people, anyway.

Beyond that, we don't have *time* to try a political solution. We have ten years at most before the planet passes the point of no return. After that, hundreds of millions or *billions* will die - the odds are good that the entire human RACE will go extinct. Do you really think that we can overcome the oligarchy's death-grip on power in time? By voting?!?

We can't. If we want to survive, our only option is revolution. Every other option has been taken from us. So get ready. Circumstances now are more friendly to revolution than they've been since the Great Depression, and things are only going to get worse. Stock up on sign-making equipment and protest gear - masks, goggles, a yellow vest, a first-aid kit, etc.. Network with neighbors - when the mass protests begin, you'll need all the friends that you can get. Do some research on how to prepare for protests. The day is coming, but when it comes everyone is going to be surprised. So get ready now.

#Revolution

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[Democratic Governors Association "urgently" requests input on who Joe Biden's running mate should be, with a choice if four]:

What side would you like with your arsenic-and-shit sandwich? We urgently need to know.

1. Corrupt corporate flunky and rapist-defender with a double garnish of identity politics and extra faux liberal smarm 

2. Corrupt corporate flunky and rapist-defender with a double garnish of identity politics and a liberal sprinkling of hypocrisy. Served by a genuine prison inmate/slave!

3. Corrupt corporate flunky and rapist-defender with a garnish of identity politics and LOTS of abuse on the side. Served with a comb.

4. Corrupt corporate flunky and rapist-defender with a garnish of identity politics (some artificial), laden with tangy rattlesnake backstabbing sauce.

Don't forget to donate! That's the whole point, anyway.

-----------

The DNC has plowed millions of dollars for over five years now to install mindless terror of Trump into liberal voters. Trump is Hitler, Trump the the worst thing imaginable, Trump is going to destroy the world (as if Biden wasn't going to do the same thing)...all to terrorize people into forgetting that it was the DNC who brought us Trump in the first place. And to get us to vote for their Blue Trump without perceiving the utter irony of it all.