It's funny. I know that Amy Coney Barrett is supposed to panic me. But I just don't care. It's like having terminal cancer, and being told about yet another tumor. It's ALREADY terminal, so who cares?
The only way we get to survive is if we overthrow the whole system. Another tumor more or less isn't going to change that.
Ellie: Hi Peter, this is Ellie with the Democrats. We're about to embark on the largest national relational Get Out The Vote effort ever! We're celebrating all of your hard work and the journey ahead tomorrow at 8pm ET with special guest Zooey Deschanel! Can you join us?
Peter: Not until the Democrats support Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and a ban on fracking - and convince me that they really mean it.
Peter: That's probably true, but the Democrats have made it quite clear that they are not interested in any of those goals. Joe Biden won't even ban fracking, even though we have seven years at most before climate change passes the point of no return. Does that make any sense to you? I have a child, and I can't accept the Democratic party's refusal to take climate change seriously. It's the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.
Peter: It's not a matter of Biden not being ideal. I followed his career for a long time, and I've studied what the Democratic party has been doing - particularly since 1980. They serve the same oligarchs that Trump serves. The only significant difference in their policies is that the Democrats are more eager to go to war. And that's just because Trump is a coward. Have you seen the climate clock? You can Google that. In 7 years and less than 70 days, human extinction becomes a virtual inevitability. But Joe Biden and the Democrats won't even ban fracking! There is no way that I can accept that.
And while I know that the DNC has put a huge amount of time, effort, and money to terrorize Americans about the evil of Trump, it was the Democrats' policies that BROUGHT us Trump. I've read Hillary's Pied Piper email. If Trump was such a threat, why did the Democrats elevate him in the media in 2016? And why have they given him everything he has asked for and more in congress?
They won't even fight his latest Supreme Court nomination. They don't represent me, and they don't care about a future for the children of the world. Their actions prove that. Doesn't that bother you?
Peter: But that's the horror of it. "Jobs"?!? Really? It's LIVES that are at stake - all of our lives. Joe Biden claims to listen to the science, but the science is very clear and he is ignoring it as much as Trump is. We have less than seven years and three months before we pass the point of no return on climate change. After that, there is nothing we can do to keep the Earth from becoming mostly uninhabitable for human beings for the next 5,000 years. And yet Joe Biden won't even ban FRACKING. The Paris Accord is a Band-Aid on a corpse. The scientists are unanimous that it is nowhere near enough.
Joe Biden accepts huge contributions from the fossil fuel industry. How do you reconcile that with the climate catastrophe that is bearing down on us so quickly?
Peter: I've read their policies. They're absolutely inadequate. What more, I'm quite positive that they will never be implemented. Since 1980 the Democrats have consistently signaled left on their platform and political promises, only to go hard right when they actually had the chance. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me dozens of times? I don't think so. The Democrats work for Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, and the oligarchy, just as Trump does. Sorry, but I have been following this for a long time.
And I'm a parent. I WON'T go along with ignoring the reality of climate change. Or with denying health care to millions. Or with driving millions more into bankruptcy for the profit of Biden's credit-industry campaign donors. Or with starting new wars against Venezuela and Syria. Or with supporting the genocides in Palastine and Yemen. Doesn't any of that BOTHER you?
Peter: The DNC has successfully convinced me that my vote doesn't matter. By rigging two primaries in a row, they've made it clear that our only choices will be between servants of the oligarchs. I'll vote for Howie Hawkins, but it's very clear that we will not be allowed to VOTE ourselves free. The only Democratic candidate that I will consider voting for is Ed Markey, and that's because the DNC has done everything they can to punish him for co-sponsoring the Green New Deal.
If you Google "climate clock", you'll find a clock counting down the time to which climate change becomes irreversible and our entire species extinction will be inevitable. There are links that document the science behind that clock. Look up what scientists say about the Biden plan. It will not save us. As I said, I'm a parent. I don't know if you are. But I won't go along with a plan that means death for my child and any potential grandchildren. Not to mention the children of the world. I can't imagine any choice that would be more evil.
Peter: Good luck. And if things go bad, as I believe they will...I hope you'll join us in the streets.
Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, Brand New Congress, the Sunrise Movement...any time a shiny new progressive organization appears, it's a safe bet that it's another astroturf project to sucker leftists into wasting our energy and time by working within the system. The oligarchy is happen to spend money to keep us from the only thing that might save humanity: Revolution.
Here's the hashtag I was trying to figure out!
#BreakUpFacebook
And since I can say it here without being banned, break up Mark Zuckerberg, too. With a guillotine.
The 24-hour suspension that I got from Facebook last evening had magically turned into a three-day suspension today - for no reason that I can see, since I wasn't on Facebook since last night and am not able to post, comment, or react to anything there anyway.
I plan to work up an anti-Zuckerberg meme, post it on Facebook, and spend as much time off Facebook as possible.
The bastards in question are the ones who own and run the big corporations that are killing us all off. Including Facebook!
And while I'm at it, this is a good example of a problem I was writing about twenty or thirty years ago: when the only meaningful platforms for speech are privately owned, freedom of speech no longer exists. In this case, I can speak only as Facebook allows, or I can...well, there IS no meaningful alternative way to speak. So I am effectively silenced.
Let's consider possibilities.
Right now the likeliest outcome appears to be a clear win for Biden, if the polls and media are right. In that case, Trump can either claim fraud and take legal action, or accept defeat.
My money would be on legal action, dragged out as long as possible. This would be accompanied by protest marches and some rioting by Trump supporters, with little or no police action taken against the rioters (unless some of the rioters happen to be black, or there are some black bystanders in the general area of a protest).
The DNC would attempt to work up some counterprotests. I'm not sure how effective those would be. Those of us who oppose both candidates would be rendered effectively invisible in the media, of course. No doubt we'd see a huge amount of identity-politics-shaming from DNC spokespeople and media personalities.
At this point I only see two possible outcomes. There's no way this doesn't get taken to the Supreme Court. Odds are that the court would dodge this decision if they could, but they may not be able to.
I suspect this is one of those cases where we would see naked politics on the court, like Bush v Gore. Which would mean that Trump would get it, particularly if Justice Handmaiden gets on the court in time. If that happens, we will see some liberals in the street in pussy hats, chanting cringy slogans that were focus tested by the DNC. But the whole thing will probably end up fizzling out with a second term for Trump.
Alternatively the court might give it to Biden, in which case we may see some shootings from Trump supporters. I don't see that turning into a full-blown civil war, though. People tend to overestimate the number of truly passionate supporters on either side. Most people are just trying to survive.
I guess a third possibility would be some attempt at splitting the baby by the court. They might order a nationwide recount, or even a new election. This would be entirely new territory, legally. The Constitution has nothing to say about this. So it's pretty much a crapshoot.
Obviously the above applies to a narrow win by either candidate. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are ready to claim fraud and fight this in court, with adjuncts in the street. Once again those of us who oppose both candidates and actually want to do something about the impending climate apocalypse will be rendered invisible in the media.
If anything, the least likely scenarios would seem to be a clear win by one candidate and a concession by the other.
My best guess is that we won't see anything near a full-blown civil war, but the credibility of the US system of government and elections will be even more seriously damaged, probably permanently. This is likely to lead to an existential crisis within the next four to eight years. What comes out of that crisis is beyond the scope of this post. But since the climate point of no return will be taking place in 7 years, it is likely to play a major role in that crisis.
What do you think?
Martha: Hi Peter, I'm Martha, volunteering for Joe Biden and Democrats. Voting is already underway - we need your help making calls to turn out voters across the country! Can you sign up for a calls training this week?
For those who say that Joe Biden has no policies: you're wrong. He does have a policy. It's DEATH TO AMERICA.
Think I'm kidding? We have seven years at most to make massive, fundamental changes to our economy and society before we pass the point of no return on climate change. But Biden won't even ban fracking, and wants a "middle ground" on climate policy. That translates to human extinction.
America is part of the human race. Human extinction = death to America.
Pretty simple if you think about it.
My latest meme, if is IS a meme - I'm not always clear on that.
Censorship on Facebook and Reddit is getting worse and worse - particularly when it comes to progressive and socialist content. That trend is only going to accelerate. It would be smart to find backups and alternatives for Facebook and Reddit now, before leftist communities are smashed, shut down, or censored out of existence.
When Google announced that Google Plus was going to be shut down, a group of us there got together to research social media for a new home. We gathered a lot of data and stored it in a Google Docs spreadsheet that I created. I published that spreadsheet to the web here:
To summarize, the primary candidates were MeWe, Mastodon, and DreamWidth.
MeWe picked up a lot of enthusiastic converts. The owner had put a lot of effort into getting G+'s soon-to-be expatriates on MeWe. I, however, was a skeptic. Here's why.
MeWe is owned by a libertarian businessman. The site is effectively a "walled garden"; anything you write there is invisible to outside search engines. So new people will never stumble on your work, and no one can share anything that you write with people outside of MeWe.
That is, unless changes have been made in the last year. The owner said he was going to have some of those issues fixed, but I had the strong impression that the "fixes" he was talking about weren't really going to address the issues. Basically, MeWe is sort of a web ghetto. I also worry because I don't entirely trust the owner. I've been screwed by sites that were owned by venture capitalists too many times.
Of course, the real problem with ANY competitor to Facebook is the user base. No matter how great an alternative is, if your friends aren't there too there's no point in posting there. And if not much is posted there, your friends don't have a reason to join. Catch-22.
I have a MeWe account myself, but I make very little use of it. I started a couple of groups there: "Facebook Refugees" and "Change the World" (a socialist/revolution group). Facebook Refugees has a lot of members, but there's nothing much of interest being posted there. People still join, though.
But as I said, I only go there to approve new members for the Facebook Refugees group.
MeWe is free, but there are paid subscriptions available with extra features. They're a bit pushy about marketing those paid subs.
Perhaps I should explain the whole "federated" thing. There are individual server-hosts for Mastodon. They have a limited number of members. But all of the hosts are effectively connected by the software, so you can follow anyone on any Mastodon host. One drawback to Mastodon is that at this point it's not possible to create groups there. You can follow other users and be followed, but as far as I've been able to discover there are no groups on Mastodon. Also, Mastodon works via hashtags - you must include hashtags in your posts or they're unlikely to be discovered.
I'll admit up front that I am biased in favor of DreamWidth. It's a separately-owned code fork of LiveJournal, and is considerably older than MeWe or Mastodon. It's owned by a couple of former LJ staffers; they seem very idealistic and supportive of free speech. That said, although I have some friends on Dreamwidth, I haven't been getting much interaction there. It's pretty dead. I wish that it wasn't.
It allows you to create and join groups. Posts aren't limited in length. Free accounts don't get image hosting, but you can link to images hosted elsewhere. There's a fine degree of control of who can see each post that you make in your own account; you can create all sorts of filters, or post publicly.
Posts can be linked to outside of DreamWidth, and anyone can read public posts there without having to join. Search engines such as Google are able to crawl public posts, so they come up in search results.
All of those social media alternatives are free, although MeWe tends to nag you a little about getting a free trial of the paid version. Dreamwidth has a paid version too, but the free version is totally functional and they don't nag. As far as I know, Mastodon is just plain free.
Just a note, but if you're interested in secure communication, I'd suggest following Edward Snowden; he sometimes recommends apps to use or stay away from, and he knows what he's talking about. Right now I have ProtonMail for secure email. Signal and Telegram are both options for encrypted IM and telephony. All are currently available for free.
Today two friends on Facebook, long-time staunch leftists (or so I thought) announced that they were now supporting Biden because Trump was so terrible.
I'm sickened. It's hard not to despair right now. How can they co-operate with the oligarchy like this? I've snoozed them both for 30 days. I hope they come to their senses!
