Author: Ruby Sinreich

More-Popular-Than-Democracy-An-American-Coup-Detat

Wake up! Democracy is on life support.

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We’re not just facing a constitutional crisis. Diabolical mastermind Steve Bannon is laying the foundation for a total government takeover by Trump, Inc. Please read “Trial Balloon for a Coup?” by Yonatan Zunger for just the latest developments of this.

If you still think we can fight back in midterm elections or 2020 you are intentionally avoiding the facts. It’s awful, but please expose yourself to the truth. We have to move past our shock and start putting ourselves directly in the way of this fascist kleptocracy. (I’m still figuring out how.)

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

[Saturday] was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.

– Trial Balloon for a Coup? by Yonatan Zunger on Medium, 1/29/17.

Image source: More Popular Than Democracy: An American Coup D’état, 9/15/15. (Warning: kind of crazy.)

Trump’s Lies Pave the Way for an Assault on Voting Rights

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If the legitimacy of the government derives from the consent of the majority, then at some point, we will have to address this disjuncture between the popular will and our elected bodies. We should start with nonpartisan redistricting reforms, and a fresh look at the Electoral College. But Mr. Trump’s comments make the adoption of democratic reforms that much harder.

Second, there’s a more insidious longer-term purpose here as well. Propaganda about illegal voting has been used — throughout history and in modern times — to justify unnecessary restrictions on voting. Unpopular incumbents like Mr. Trump can help their odds of re-election with measures that make it harder for people to vote.

Source: Trump’s Lies Pave the Way for an Assault on Voting Rights – The New York Times

Don’t negotiate with terrorists

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What is up with these Democrats playing kickball at a gun fight? They are negotiating with themselves. Republicans are not playing, they’re burning our government down as fast as possible. They’re not compromising, not looking for common ground, not thinking about how they’d want the system to work if they were not in power. (This is why they are a death cult. There is no end game.)

There is no long game. There probably won’t even be a functioning democracy left to govern in 5 years.

Everyone knows you don’t negotiate with terrorists. WHAT. ARE. THEY. THINKING?

Welcome to 1984. Trump is more dystopian than Orwell.

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Three different Orwell experts find massive and unmistakable parallels between the Trump administration and the dystopian nightmare of 1984.

This part quoted below struck me the most because so many of us cried out about lies, fake morality, and deception during the Bush administration, but there were never any social or political consequences. So of course the post-truth war on the reality-based community has continued and intensified.

But this new world has been a while coming. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” were foreshadowed by the George W Bush adviser who said in 2002 that the new American empire was “creating [its] own reality”. As in the 1930s, war has been at the heart of the corrosion of trust in politicians. The lies over Iraq and the quagmire of Afghanistan were followed by the financial crash of 2008, and bankers’ bonuses – making people far more willing to disbelieve the remote metropolitan media and be drawn to the false dawn promised by Trump.

Read more in The Guardian today:  Welcome to dystopia – George Orwell experts on Donald Trump.

Image source

“Mother of Exiles”

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The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

Photo: First Lady Nancy Reagan waves from the Statue of Liberty after she re opened the structure on its 100th birthday, 1986.

Same as it ever was

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16 years ago today I was wearing warm sturdy shoes I had bought the night before with a friend just for the occasion, and was being harassed in the streets of DC confused, scared, and angry with my fellow young-ish people in hoodies. Today I appreciated being able to watch these live videos from Black Lives Matter of the movement continuing. (Embedded below.)

Although I think everything about Trumpism is more dangerous to humanity and to the planet than the craven, corrupt, cynically ideological, and illegal Bush administration was, this is definitely a continuation of the many strategies popularized then, especially by Karl Rove who knew he didn’t even have to bother trying to listen to or govern the “reality-based community.”

I am truly happy to see how many millions of people are now mobilized against Republicans’ agenda of ignorance and fear. But I am also feeling really melancholy about how much it takes to get people to WAKE UP. If this many people had been marching with us 16 years ago, we might have limited their disastrous policies and maybe never even been attacked on 9/11. We would not have been sending troops to protect US oil interests, destabilize governments, destroy infrastructure, and give people reasons to hate us. We might not be dealing with ISIS today.

Once again those of us that are dismissed as “hippies” when we try to prevent violence and militarism were right. Will anyone ever listen to reason? Will our country ever get it right? Is it even possible?

Earlier:

Putting our hearts and bodies where our mouths are

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Best wishes to everyone putting your hearts and bodies on the line at women’s marches and other demonstrations in your towns, states, and country because we believe a better America is still possible.

 

Blessing for the Women’s March

By Erika A. Hewitt (Unitarian Universalist minister)

May you be safe.
May you be free from all harm.

As the road or skies carry you toward your fellow pilgrims,
may you sense the presence of those who travel with you in spirit,
whose hopes and hearts are tucked into your pockets,
who name your journey’s purpose as sacred.

May you encounter strangers-as-kindred,
and may that recognition of kinship bring joy to your journey.

Whether the faces in the crowd number in the dozens, hundreds, or thousands,
may you not only recognize yourself,
but may you also witness a dazzling tapestry of colors, languages, genders, ages, and bodies:
proud testament to and humbling display of our human family.

May the crowds be gentle, friendly, and patient.
If not, may the Spirit of Playfulness appoint you its momentary agent.
May you offer quiet praise for gestures of kindness.

May all bodies — vessels of spirit and soul — be treated as the gift that they are.
May the sturdiest of marchers make space for those who need more time,
more help, or a different means of moving.

May those bearing snacks share generously with others.
May you fuel yourself wisely, and hydrate.
In your hour of need, may you easily find a restroom,
and may it accommodate your body’s gender, size, and abilities.
May the line for the restroom be short.
If not, may you delight in the impulse to connect in ways mundane and profound.

Amid the heady flurry of selfies and hashtags,
may you remember the commitment that led you there,
and what will be required for the road ahead.

Gather it all up, blessed one; let it feed you.
Allow the crowds’ electric thrum to seep into you,
knitting itself into courage;
into holy boldness;
into fuel for the journey back, and for the journey forward.

http://www.uua.org/worship/words/blessing/blessing-womens-march

“what can I call us but lighthouse”

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“Revenge” by Elisa Chavez, in The Seattle Review of Books

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.

I couldve swung either way? But now Im definitely spending
the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
Im gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;

Ill give birth to an army of mixed-race babies.
With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars,
my legion of multiracial babies will be intersectional as fuck
and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,

because real talk, you didnt stop the future from coming.
You just delayed our coronation.
We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
we are still getting gay-married like nobodys business
because its still nobodys business;
theres a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing,
and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:

we didnt manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
the buildings here are not on your side just because
you make them spray-painted accomplices.
These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
Even the earth found common cause with us
the way you trample us both,

oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
but I wont, because theyre my family,
in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
If youve never loved someone like that
you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.

Ill confess I dont know if Im alive right now;
I havent heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.

But I finally found the argument against suicide and its us.
Were the effigies that haunt Americas nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,

of course Im terrified. Of course Im a shroud.
And of course its not fair but rest assured,
anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
You cannot deport our minds; we wont
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.