Clancy Sigal's Blog, page 2
March 16, 2017
OK, ALL YOU GLUMPOTS OUT THERE, HERE'S A DUTCH FINGER IN THE WIND. DON'T YOU DARE SAY, OH THAT'S HOLLAND AND WE'RE SO VERY DIFFERENT.
(This from the UK Guardian. Your attention is drawn to the second paragraph, about different groups merging,
and the youth of the victor.)
The big winner of Wednesday’s Netherlands election – and now the largest party of the Dutch left for the first time – was GreenLeft, headed by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver, hailed by his enthusiastic supporters as the “Jessiah”.
According to a generally reliable Ipsos exit poll, the party – formed 25 years ago by a merger of communists, pacifists, evangelicals and self-styled radicals – quadrupled its MPs from four to 16 after a storming campaign by Klaver.
The party celebrated its historic advance with a tweet showing a gif of Kermit the Frog dancing for joy.
Sometimes compared to Canada’s youthful prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Klaver – who has a Moroccan father and a mother of Indonesian descent – said on polling day that the left’s answer to the far right’s rise in Europe was to stand up for its ideals.
“What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace,” he said.
“Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. You can stop populism.”
The Netherlands’ youngest ever party leader, Klaver built a strong following on social media through small Meetup events after taking over GreenLeft’s leadership in May 2015.
His TV debates were also widely regarded as triumphs. In one debate watched by 1.6 million viewers, Klaver told his far-right, anti-Islam rival Geert Wilders that it was rightwing populism, not Muslim immigration, that was undermining Dutch culture and traditions.
and the youth of the victor.)
The big winner of Wednesday’s Netherlands election – and now the largest party of the Dutch left for the first time – was GreenLeft, headed by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver, hailed by his enthusiastic supporters as the “Jessiah”.
According to a generally reliable Ipsos exit poll, the party – formed 25 years ago by a merger of communists, pacifists, evangelicals and self-styled radicals – quadrupled its MPs from four to 16 after a storming campaign by Klaver.
The party celebrated its historic advance with a tweet showing a gif of Kermit the Frog dancing for joy.
Sometimes compared to Canada’s youthful prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Klaver – who has a Moroccan father and a mother of Indonesian descent – said on polling day that the left’s answer to the far right’s rise in Europe was to stand up for its ideals.
“What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace,” he said.
“Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. You can stop populism.”
The Netherlands’ youngest ever party leader, Klaver built a strong following on social media through small Meetup events after taking over GreenLeft’s leadership in May 2015.
His TV debates were also widely regarded as triumphs. In one debate watched by 1.6 million viewers, Klaver told his far-right, anti-Islam rival Geert Wilders that it was rightwing populism, not Muslim immigration, that was undermining Dutch culture and traditions.
March 6, 2017
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SET FREE HAPPY GORILLAS?
I came of age under the shadow of a Cold War mushroom cloud whose flash you could see from my Sunset Boulevard office all the way over to the Nevada Testing Ground. Los Angeles was ringed by nuclear tipped Nike missiles programmed for a Soviet first strike. Popular mass magazines like Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and Time were devoted to scary Third World War scenarios, and we all believed them.
This was school children’s ‘duck and cover’ time when classrooms were shown horrific films of blast damage. We grownups didn’t walk around in panic all the time merely assumed as Doris Day sang ‘Que Sera Sera’, what will be will be.
So, for a certain generation, we’re not that keen for another confrontation with Russia that might result in mutual incineration.
The uproar about Putin’s hacking, Jeff Sessions meeting with a spy and who else at what time had cocktails with a Russian is a smokescreen whipped up by both the press (I hate the word media) and Democratic pols to distract us from seeing that the opposition party has no plan. The Trumps send up clouds of obscurity made even murkier by liberalish, high profile reporters who trade “access” for pretending what they hear isn’t bullshit.
Pres. Bannon and his deputy Trump are playing us masterfully.
Most recent example is Trump pretending, to a select crew of suckered big-name journos, that he may or may not amend, reverse or “humanize” his deportations. Oh, does he know how to play us!
In reality Bannon-Trump can’t afford to retreat from their mass roundup of immigrants because it’s the heart, the very keystone, of their agenda. Block or slow down the deportations is to lose “credibility” with the haters who are their base already raising hell to deport more, more and more.
Unless stopped the racial attack on any of the eleven million “unauthorized” (illegal, undocumented) aliens among us will accelerate. At this moment, all over the country, and here in Los Angeles, the ICEmen are pulling men, women and even children off their jobs, out of schools, from hospitals and courtrooms.
The Obama policy of “catch and release” – keeping mothers and children together – canceled.
DACA - deferred action for child arrivals - shredding.
Our immigration police are drunk on their expanded power to arrest, detain, imprison and in a case here at the San Ysidro check point the murder of an illegal father of five.
Our California school principals now are warning their pupils to carry ID with them at all times and if at risk to have a family plan and power of attorney. Dad drops you off at school and you may never see him again.==
The word is out, the ICEman is “unshackled”.
Promotion and bonuses depend on invading “target rich” communities. God help you if you have a DUI or shoplifting offense. In El Paso a woman is arrested for reporting her rape, in Jackson, Mississippi for making a pro immigrant speech.
Yet, with few exceptions, I scan the press or watch TV news including CNN and MSNBC, and almost nada. Bill Maher, John Oliver, Colbert – nada. For most anchors, hosts and reporters, the mass roundups aren’t happening. The eleven million vanish as if by magic.
We are normalizing the berserk actions of an immigrant political police in order to join the swine hunt for Moscow spies.
This was school children’s ‘duck and cover’ time when classrooms were shown horrific films of blast damage. We grownups didn’t walk around in panic all the time merely assumed as Doris Day sang ‘Que Sera Sera’, what will be will be.
So, for a certain generation, we’re not that keen for another confrontation with Russia that might result in mutual incineration.
The uproar about Putin’s hacking, Jeff Sessions meeting with a spy and who else at what time had cocktails with a Russian is a smokescreen whipped up by both the press (I hate the word media) and Democratic pols to distract us from seeing that the opposition party has no plan. The Trumps send up clouds of obscurity made even murkier by liberalish, high profile reporters who trade “access” for pretending what they hear isn’t bullshit.
Pres. Bannon and his deputy Trump are playing us masterfully.
Most recent example is Trump pretending, to a select crew of suckered big-name journos, that he may or may not amend, reverse or “humanize” his deportations. Oh, does he know how to play us!
In reality Bannon-Trump can’t afford to retreat from their mass roundup of immigrants because it’s the heart, the very keystone, of their agenda. Block or slow down the deportations is to lose “credibility” with the haters who are their base already raising hell to deport more, more and more.
Unless stopped the racial attack on any of the eleven million “unauthorized” (illegal, undocumented) aliens among us will accelerate. At this moment, all over the country, and here in Los Angeles, the ICEmen are pulling men, women and even children off their jobs, out of schools, from hospitals and courtrooms.
The Obama policy of “catch and release” – keeping mothers and children together – canceled.
DACA - deferred action for child arrivals - shredding.
Our immigration police are drunk on their expanded power to arrest, detain, imprison and in a case here at the San Ysidro check point the murder of an illegal father of five.
Our California school principals now are warning their pupils to carry ID with them at all times and if at risk to have a family plan and power of attorney. Dad drops you off at school and you may never see him again.==
The word is out, the ICEman is “unshackled”.
Promotion and bonuses depend on invading “target rich” communities. God help you if you have a DUI or shoplifting offense. In El Paso a woman is arrested for reporting her rape, in Jackson, Mississippi for making a pro immigrant speech.
Yet, with few exceptions, I scan the press or watch TV news including CNN and MSNBC, and almost nada. Bill Maher, John Oliver, Colbert – nada. For most anchors, hosts and reporters, the mass roundups aren’t happening. The eleven million vanish as if by magic.
We are normalizing the berserk actions of an immigrant political police in order to join the swine hunt for Moscow spies.
February 28, 2017
IT’S FUN!
(I’ve cut to the bone yesterday’s (25 Feb) NYT story about Trump-Bannon’s terror raids. My comments, if any, in CAPS.)
Headline: “Immigration Agents Discover New Freedom to Deport “
“In Virginia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waited outside a church shelter where undocumented immigrants had gone to stay warm. In Texas and in Colorado, agents went into courthouses, looking for foreigners who had arrived for hearings on other matters. AND IN HOUSTON ICE AGENTS KIDNAPPED A SALVADORAN WOMAN FROM HOSPITAL WAITING FOR EMERGENCY BRAIN SURGERY.
Paraphrase the article: Unleashed and frustrated till now, ICE officers are thrilled, really pumped up, that the “shackles are off”, a phrase they love repeating.
“Gone are the Obama-era rules that required them to focus only on serious criminals. In a Southern California roundup officers detained 161 people with a wide range of felony and misdemeanor convictions, and 10 who had no criminal history at all.
“Before, we used to be told, ‘You can’t arrest those people,’ and we’d be disciplined for being insubordinate if we did,” said a 10-year veteran of the agency who took part in the operation. “Now those people are priorities again.”
Interviews with 17 agents and officials across the country demonstrated how quickly a new atmosphere in the agency had taken hold.
“Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of Trump’s orders,” ICE and Border Patrol union leaders say.
“But for those with ICE badges, perhaps the biggest change was the erasing of the Obama administration’s focus on deporting gang members and other violent and serious criminals, and mostly leave everyone else alone.
The shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged brazen, racist pro-Trump political comments while less hard line agents keep silent.
Lots of banter about their jobs now becoming “fun.”
“ICE has more than 20,000 employees, spread across 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries, and the Trump administration has called for the hiring of 10,000 more.
“Agents are predominantly male and have often served in the military, with a police department or both.
“The element of surprise is central to their work, and the sight of even a single white van emblazoned with the words Department of Homeland Security can create fear and cause people to flee. To minimize public contact, the arrests are frequently made in the early morning hours.
“A typical operation has teams of at least five members rising before dawn, meeting as early as 4 a.m. to make arrests before their targets depart for work. To avoid publicity and screams from families and children, the agents prefer to apprehend people outside their homes, approaching them as soon as they step onto a public sidewalk and, once identified, placing them in handcuffs.
“But agents also arrive in large numbers, armed with semiautomatic handguns and wearing dark bulletproof vests with ICE in bright white letters on them. When they do have to enter a home, officers knock loudly and announce themselves as the police, a term they can legally use. Many times, children are awakened in the process, and watch as a parent is taken away.
“BYSTANDERS are now being taken in if they are suspected to be undocumented, even if they have committed no crime.
Perhaps their biggest challenge is the agency’s steadily deteriorating relationship with other law enforcement agencies, especially in liberal-leaning cities that have vowed to protect immigrants from deportation, known as sanctuary cities.”
Headline: “Immigration Agents Discover New Freedom to Deport “
“In Virginia, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waited outside a church shelter where undocumented immigrants had gone to stay warm. In Texas and in Colorado, agents went into courthouses, looking for foreigners who had arrived for hearings on other matters. AND IN HOUSTON ICE AGENTS KIDNAPPED A SALVADORAN WOMAN FROM HOSPITAL WAITING FOR EMERGENCY BRAIN SURGERY.
Paraphrase the article: Unleashed and frustrated till now, ICE officers are thrilled, really pumped up, that the “shackles are off”, a phrase they love repeating.
“Gone are the Obama-era rules that required them to focus only on serious criminals. In a Southern California roundup officers detained 161 people with a wide range of felony and misdemeanor convictions, and 10 who had no criminal history at all.
“Before, we used to be told, ‘You can’t arrest those people,’ and we’d be disciplined for being insubordinate if we did,” said a 10-year veteran of the agency who took part in the operation. “Now those people are priorities again.”
Interviews with 17 agents and officials across the country demonstrated how quickly a new atmosphere in the agency had taken hold.
“Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of Trump’s orders,” ICE and Border Patrol union leaders say.
“But for those with ICE badges, perhaps the biggest change was the erasing of the Obama administration’s focus on deporting gang members and other violent and serious criminals, and mostly leave everyone else alone.
The shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged brazen, racist pro-Trump political comments while less hard line agents keep silent.
Lots of banter about their jobs now becoming “fun.”
“ICE has more than 20,000 employees, spread across 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries, and the Trump administration has called for the hiring of 10,000 more.
“Agents are predominantly male and have often served in the military, with a police department or both.
“The element of surprise is central to their work, and the sight of even a single white van emblazoned with the words Department of Homeland Security can create fear and cause people to flee. To minimize public contact, the arrests are frequently made in the early morning hours.
“A typical operation has teams of at least five members rising before dawn, meeting as early as 4 a.m. to make arrests before their targets depart for work. To avoid publicity and screams from families and children, the agents prefer to apprehend people outside their homes, approaching them as soon as they step onto a public sidewalk and, once identified, placing them in handcuffs.
“But agents also arrive in large numbers, armed with semiautomatic handguns and wearing dark bulletproof vests with ICE in bright white letters on them. When they do have to enter a home, officers knock loudly and announce themselves as the police, a term they can legally use. Many times, children are awakened in the process, and watch as a parent is taken away.
“BYSTANDERS are now being taken in if they are suspected to be undocumented, even if they have committed no crime.
Perhaps their biggest challenge is the agency’s steadily deteriorating relationship with other law enforcement agencies, especially in liberal-leaning cities that have vowed to protect immigrants from deportation, known as sanctuary cities.”
February 23, 2017
NAZIS CALLED IT A ‘RAFLE’ OR ROUNDUP
“The Rafle was a Nazi directed raid to mass arrest Jews in Paris by the French police in 1942.”
This is what we know so far.
Trump/Bannon have made good on their promise to make life miserable for Latino immigrants undocumented or not.
Millions of them now face a real possibility of being kicked out. These include friends of ours so I take Trump’s racial purge seriously and personally. Trump/Bannon have told the Marine general who now runs Homeland Security to immediately start arresting for deportation anyone in the country regardless of whether they’ve committed a “crime” such as shoplifting or a traffic warrant.
God help you if you fib to get food stamps or take your child to an emergency room or apply for rent money to the government.
Past privacy protection is null and void. Anyone with a badge can poke into your personal records.
This is what we know so far.
Trump/Bannon have made good on their promise to make life miserable for Latino immigrants undocumented or not.
Millions of them now face a real possibility of being kicked out. These include friends of ours so I take Trump’s racial purge seriously and personally. Trump/Bannon have told the Marine general who now runs Homeland Security to immediately start arresting for deportation anyone in the country regardless of whether they’ve committed a “crime” such as shoplifting or a traffic warrant.
God help you if you fib to get food stamps or take your child to an emergency room or apply for rent money to the government.
Past privacy protection is null and void. Anyone with a badge can poke into your personal records.
February 22, 2017
GROUSERS ON PARADE
“…progressives have groused that some blue-collar unions are willing to sell their souls for a few thousand jobs.”
The above NYTimes quote is by three reporters tracking down why Trump is making inroads with many labor union leaders. The ‘progressives’ the reporters talked to are a big reason why the Dems lost so big. Tone deafness and class blindness. To environmentalists and their liberal allies “a few thousand jobs” is a mere whiffle if climate change can be protected in the name of the planet.
“A few thousand jobs” is for many families the difference between food stamps and mortgage default and keeping their heads above water.
The class thing is so blatant. For “us”, which includes Clinton’s former labor secy Robert Reich, the “few” jobs are a tiny spike on a statistical chart. For the rest of us they’re a catastrophe. Where is the human feeling in all this? It used to be called solidarity. That's so yesterday.
We lost the 2016 election the moment Pres. Obama refused to show up in Madison, Wisconsin for the huge rally by cops, teachers, public workers and students protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s successful bid to destroy collective bargaining. Everything followed from such “even handedness”, essentially not giving a damn for what matters to workers. Bernie Sanders knew, and knows; yet from Obama top down a moral deafness except to urban-identity complaints.
Trump and his Steve Bannon brain are very shrewd to capitalize on his victory by inviting key labor leaders to the Oval Office, which was almost never done in the lofty Obama years. Don’t call these unionists sellouts; their naked mission is to protect jobs.
For the moment put aside the media-driven frenzy, a sort of gang bang static, about Gen. Flynn, Russian hackers, conflicts of interest, Ivanka's rags and Trump’s wild man bluster. Nuts but not a fool, he’s systematically picking apart the once deep coalition of Democratic party and its first line of defense, unions. Given the voting split beween pro Clinton labor leaders and ordinary members, at this moment the unions are easy pickings.
If we lose the unions, we lose our heart.
The above NYTimes quote is by three reporters tracking down why Trump is making inroads with many labor union leaders. The ‘progressives’ the reporters talked to are a big reason why the Dems lost so big. Tone deafness and class blindness. To environmentalists and their liberal allies “a few thousand jobs” is a mere whiffle if climate change can be protected in the name of the planet.
“A few thousand jobs” is for many families the difference between food stamps and mortgage default and keeping their heads above water.
The class thing is so blatant. For “us”, which includes Clinton’s former labor secy Robert Reich, the “few” jobs are a tiny spike on a statistical chart. For the rest of us they’re a catastrophe. Where is the human feeling in all this? It used to be called solidarity. That's so yesterday.
We lost the 2016 election the moment Pres. Obama refused to show up in Madison, Wisconsin for the huge rally by cops, teachers, public workers and students protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s successful bid to destroy collective bargaining. Everything followed from such “even handedness”, essentially not giving a damn for what matters to workers. Bernie Sanders knew, and knows; yet from Obama top down a moral deafness except to urban-identity complaints.
Trump and his Steve Bannon brain are very shrewd to capitalize on his victory by inviting key labor leaders to the Oval Office, which was almost never done in the lofty Obama years. Don’t call these unionists sellouts; their naked mission is to protect jobs.
For the moment put aside the media-driven frenzy, a sort of gang bang static, about Gen. Flynn, Russian hackers, conflicts of interest, Ivanka's rags and Trump’s wild man bluster. Nuts but not a fool, he’s systematically picking apart the once deep coalition of Democratic party and its first line of defense, unions. Given the voting split beween pro Clinton labor leaders and ordinary members, at this moment the unions are easy pickings.
If we lose the unions, we lose our heart.
January 25, 2017
WHY DID FRANK CAPRA AND JIMMY STEWART’S BEDFORD FALLS IN "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE" VOTE FOR TRUMP?
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it we must.
He was duly elected.
By working incredibly hard, against the odds, with almost no ground staff at first and even at the end, but using mass rallies and constant press focus, he beat her.
If we want to overcome, suggest you drop venting (that effiing @##$%%%%%) and ineffective satire to see what actually happened.
And also put aside the unproven and unprovable “Putin hack”. Since when do we rely on the CIA for truth? Cheering for it will boomerang.
The sad truth is that Trump worked harder and more strategically than Clinton, and the 95% white small towns like “Bedford Falls” were crazy about him pussy-grabber or not.
How else in the Republican primary did he win ALL 67 Pennsylvania counties which had never been done before?
Because he could give people what they wanted and Hillary could not: spectacle, crudeness and racism.
The county of Seneca Falls, New York, Capra’s model for “It’s A Wonderful Life” – ironically, the cradle of women’s rights movement – went for Trump decisively though the city itself gave Clinton a bare majority.
Let’s hear it for civilization’s greatest achievement: cities.
I love the idea of small towns but am a big city boy, proud and unredeemed. The suburbs that turned out for Trump give me the whimwhams.
Walking back the 2016 election it’s easy to see Trump’s genius for self advertisement. In town after town suffering from neglect, Main Street boarded up, he tirelessly showed up in places he was predicted to lose
for his “I feel your pain and only I can fix it” show. For people with half an ear it was entertaining and affirming.
Seneca Falls once had knitting mills. The last mill is gone replaced by a Women’s Museum.
Why did we not notice that his rallies, his “alternative facts”, were brilliantly counter-intuitive and bursting at the seams with negative energy?
Lacking a solid ground organization, poorly organized, rafters shaking with his confident fakery, he fought against Hillary, his own (quite lean) campaign staff and The Establishment of his own party.
He connected to the small town Devil in all of us.
Hillary said we were better than that, and we aren’t.
Now then, how do we do what the Democrats failed at and continue to fail at because, let’s face it, our hearts aren’t in it, to drag into the light of day so many people left behind?
He was duly elected.
By working incredibly hard, against the odds, with almost no ground staff at first and even at the end, but using mass rallies and constant press focus, he beat her.
If we want to overcome, suggest you drop venting (that effiing @##$%%%%%) and ineffective satire to see what actually happened.
And also put aside the unproven and unprovable “Putin hack”. Since when do we rely on the CIA for truth? Cheering for it will boomerang.
The sad truth is that Trump worked harder and more strategically than Clinton, and the 95% white small towns like “Bedford Falls” were crazy about him pussy-grabber or not.
How else in the Republican primary did he win ALL 67 Pennsylvania counties which had never been done before?
Because he could give people what they wanted and Hillary could not: spectacle, crudeness and racism.
The county of Seneca Falls, New York, Capra’s model for “It’s A Wonderful Life” – ironically, the cradle of women’s rights movement – went for Trump decisively though the city itself gave Clinton a bare majority.
Let’s hear it for civilization’s greatest achievement: cities.
I love the idea of small towns but am a big city boy, proud and unredeemed. The suburbs that turned out for Trump give me the whimwhams.
Walking back the 2016 election it’s easy to see Trump’s genius for self advertisement. In town after town suffering from neglect, Main Street boarded up, he tirelessly showed up in places he was predicted to lose
for his “I feel your pain and only I can fix it” show. For people with half an ear it was entertaining and affirming.
Seneca Falls once had knitting mills. The last mill is gone replaced by a Women’s Museum.
Why did we not notice that his rallies, his “alternative facts”, were brilliantly counter-intuitive and bursting at the seams with negative energy?
Lacking a solid ground organization, poorly organized, rafters shaking with his confident fakery, he fought against Hillary, his own (quite lean) campaign staff and The Establishment of his own party.
He connected to the small town Devil in all of us.
Hillary said we were better than that, and we aren’t.
Now then, how do we do what the Democrats failed at and continue to fail at because, let’s face it, our hearts aren’t in it, to drag into the light of day so many people left behind?
January 23, 2017
WHO'S UP FOR THIS LONG WAR?
“Quit blaming everybody for your problems. Get out there and do it yourself.”
– -woman in Michigan’s Rust Belt hostile to the Big March
*
It took almost 30 years of protest to end the Vietnam war starting in 1945 and ending with the last U.S. troops to leave in 1973.
Trump is declaring war on the 66 million American voters who refused to support him. He won’t forgive, ever.
Our war of resistance means:
1. Counter-sabotage against Trump’s army of destroyers. Not a step back. Harass, nag and hold feet to the fire of your Reps and senator.
2. After the women return home from their amazing D.C.-and-other-cities march dig in for the hard, hard work of creating a local, focused, disciplined movement – led by women – capable of going beyond protest to TAKE CHARGE. And, yes, invite pro-life women.
3. Brutally dismantle the Democratic National Committee that handed the election to Trump. This will traumatize loyal Democrats and Hillary fans. MSNBC is a Democratic megaphone and does us no favors doing CPR on a corpse. Sorry, Rachel, that means you too.
Once that’s accomplished, we imitate the Tea Party who copied us. Repeat: say “No!” until their ears ring. And then re-capture education boards, mayorships, mid-term offices, getting the experience to GOVERN and regain Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020.
What? Wait another four years? If that’s what it takes.
Who among us can or will last it out?
During Vietnam we had some things going for us absent now. Remember?
Firstly, the music (“The Times They Are Achanging”). A rebel doped up counterculture. Some sane Republicans. A Vietnamese enemy refused to surrender. An expanded draft pissed off the young poor and their parents (but not rich chickenhawks like Donald). Ordinary citizens publicly torched themselves as symbolic witness. A loved and hated celebrity Muhammed Ali refused to serve. Exposure of government lies by nosey reporters and fearless insiders like Dan Ellsberg.
Sixties protest, at first small and weak and limited to the Usual Suspects, spread dramatically to include priests, rabbis, business people and dissenting generals. A unified, strong broad front. Most crucially, resistance inside military led to desertions, fragging, demoralization and finally refusal to fight.
With all that going for us, popular support for Lyndon Johnson’s war remained pretty high even when the apparatus was collapsing. Lesson: fight popular opinion.
If we lack some of the stuff the Vietnam generation had, what do we have?
Women.
In this particular war men are in a support role. Women lead, persuade – and win.
– -woman in Michigan’s Rust Belt hostile to the Big March
*
It took almost 30 years of protest to end the Vietnam war starting in 1945 and ending with the last U.S. troops to leave in 1973.
Trump is declaring war on the 66 million American voters who refused to support him. He won’t forgive, ever.
Our war of resistance means:
1. Counter-sabotage against Trump’s army of destroyers. Not a step back. Harass, nag and hold feet to the fire of your Reps and senator.
2. After the women return home from their amazing D.C.-and-other-cities march dig in for the hard, hard work of creating a local, focused, disciplined movement – led by women – capable of going beyond protest to TAKE CHARGE. And, yes, invite pro-life women.
3. Brutally dismantle the Democratic National Committee that handed the election to Trump. This will traumatize loyal Democrats and Hillary fans. MSNBC is a Democratic megaphone and does us no favors doing CPR on a corpse. Sorry, Rachel, that means you too.
Once that’s accomplished, we imitate the Tea Party who copied us. Repeat: say “No!” until their ears ring. And then re-capture education boards, mayorships, mid-term offices, getting the experience to GOVERN and regain Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020.
What? Wait another four years? If that’s what it takes.
Who among us can or will last it out?
During Vietnam we had some things going for us absent now. Remember?
Firstly, the music (“The Times They Are Achanging”). A rebel doped up counterculture. Some sane Republicans. A Vietnamese enemy refused to surrender. An expanded draft pissed off the young poor and their parents (but not rich chickenhawks like Donald). Ordinary citizens publicly torched themselves as symbolic witness. A loved and hated celebrity Muhammed Ali refused to serve. Exposure of government lies by nosey reporters and fearless insiders like Dan Ellsberg.
Sixties protest, at first small and weak and limited to the Usual Suspects, spread dramatically to include priests, rabbis, business people and dissenting generals. A unified, strong broad front. Most crucially, resistance inside military led to desertions, fragging, demoralization and finally refusal to fight.
With all that going for us, popular support for Lyndon Johnson’s war remained pretty high even when the apparatus was collapsing. Lesson: fight popular opinion.
If we lack some of the stuff the Vietnam generation had, what do we have?
Women.
In this particular war men are in a support role. Women lead, persuade – and win.
January 19, 2017
HOW SMART ARE WE?
We’re supposed to be the smart educated ones so why has Trump outmsmarted us at every turn?
He won the primary. He won the election if not the vote (yes he did).
And now he disappears his huge scandals behind a smoke screen of intentionally inflammatory tweets and by falsely Trumpeting he forced Ford and GM to create American jobs.
Applause, applause from his supporters.
We call him a this and that without ever twigging his people LOVE his this and that.
He and his Goering-Gobbels shadow Steve Bannon, cleverly figured out the future war while we’re like generals fighting the last war.
So we protest – “no justice no peace” yada yada – the last war’s slogans while we wait for Trump to self-destruct or for the scandals to pile up into a new Watergate.
The best thing that’s happening in Washington – and across the country – is the Women’s March. Pray God they don’t exclude anti-abortion feminists and can whittle down their protest from the usual indigestible menu to a single focus. Copy the massed ranks of Suffragettes who harassed the 1913 inauguration of Woodrow Wilson who, like the aspiring rapist Trump, loudly despised brainy women.
Now let’s imagine we trudge home after the protest marches. What then?
We can keep calling Trump names, which is good for morale and which he feeds on.
How about fighting our future war? That is, hammer away, hammer away, and keep hammering away – yes, like Bernie and Warren - on stuff that matters like counterattacking on Obamacare and crooked Cabinet nominees, jobs yes and more jobs, funding Planned Parenthood, prison and bail reform – again and again and again.
It’s a question not a statement. Who, actually, is for this dull and indispensable work?
He won the primary. He won the election if not the vote (yes he did).
And now he disappears his huge scandals behind a smoke screen of intentionally inflammatory tweets and by falsely Trumpeting he forced Ford and GM to create American jobs.
Applause, applause from his supporters.
We call him a this and that without ever twigging his people LOVE his this and that.
He and his Goering-Gobbels shadow Steve Bannon, cleverly figured out the future war while we’re like generals fighting the last war.
So we protest – “no justice no peace” yada yada – the last war’s slogans while we wait for Trump to self-destruct or for the scandals to pile up into a new Watergate.
The best thing that’s happening in Washington – and across the country – is the Women’s March. Pray God they don’t exclude anti-abortion feminists and can whittle down their protest from the usual indigestible menu to a single focus. Copy the massed ranks of Suffragettes who harassed the 1913 inauguration of Woodrow Wilson who, like the aspiring rapist Trump, loudly despised brainy women.
Now let’s imagine we trudge home after the protest marches. What then?
We can keep calling Trump names, which is good for morale and which he feeds on.
How about fighting our future war? That is, hammer away, hammer away, and keep hammering away – yes, like Bernie and Warren - on stuff that matters like counterattacking on Obamacare and crooked Cabinet nominees, jobs yes and more jobs, funding Planned Parenthood, prison and bail reform – again and again and again.
It’s a question not a statement. Who, actually, is for this dull and indispensable work?
January 17, 2017
HEY, DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE SADDAM HUSSEIN I MEAN VLADIMIR PUTIN DELIVERED THE ELECTION TO TRUMP? I’VE GOT A BROOKLYN BRIDGE TO SELL YOU
A few days ago I urged friends to grow a pair of ears sensitive to bullshit language. How about adding a new nose?
That murky “Russian hacking” story fails - so far - to pass the smell test.
So called “news items” after item have been found to be false or half true. Newspapers like the Washington Post (but not yet NYTimes) have “walked back” the fabrications. (Putin cut off Vermont’s electricity supply, Putin caught Trump in a honey trap etc etc. – O that it were true!)
So we hate Trump for all the good reasons. Check. He’s a cruel and reckless monster. Check. He’ll make our daily lives more miserable. Check.
Here’s what we know so far which isn’t much:
Balancing the odds, and listening to perhaps contradictory advice from his secret service and tech experts, Putin decided to mess with America in Trump’s favor – in some as yet unspecified, unsourced and unproven ways.
There is NO independent verification EXCEPT secret reports from the CIA-FBI-Homeland Security apparatus. And we know how honest unblemished unbiased unpolitical and disinterested they are in the current fevered atmosphere. Oh, please.
It’s so hard for us to face the harsh, complicated reality that Trump won due to a perfect storm of boring sociological factors like the catastrophic decline in union membership (up to now a shield against racism), “de-industrialization” of whole regions, the plague of state right to work laws, the loss of jobs through automation and anti pollution regulations and massive outsourcing – and oh yes an unpopular Democratic candidate running a dumb campaign.
Until Putin comes crawling on his hands and knees before a Congressional committee to confess his intervention sins, you best go down to the corner grocery and buy a barrel of salt to pour on this Russian-hacking story.
Haven’t we been here before with Saddam Hussein’s invisible – except to neo-cons with eyes fixed on war – chemical and nuclear weapons?
Fake, fake, fake – until we have MULTIPLY SOURCED EVIDENCE BASED proof that smells fresh and good. That comes from other than the “intelligence community”. Since when do we trust them on a political issue in which they have their own pot to stir?
It takes no genius to figure out that any Russian, high or low, bad or good, would prefer a blustering salesman like Trump who has money interests to protect in Russia over Hillary a high minded war hawk who, rightly, has condemned Putin’s bloody imperialist adventures in the Crimea and Ukraine.
Paging Judith Miller!
That murky “Russian hacking” story fails - so far - to pass the smell test.
So called “news items” after item have been found to be false or half true. Newspapers like the Washington Post (but not yet NYTimes) have “walked back” the fabrications. (Putin cut off Vermont’s electricity supply, Putin caught Trump in a honey trap etc etc. – O that it were true!)
So we hate Trump for all the good reasons. Check. He’s a cruel and reckless monster. Check. He’ll make our daily lives more miserable. Check.
Here’s what we know so far which isn’t much:
Balancing the odds, and listening to perhaps contradictory advice from his secret service and tech experts, Putin decided to mess with America in Trump’s favor – in some as yet unspecified, unsourced and unproven ways.
There is NO independent verification EXCEPT secret reports from the CIA-FBI-Homeland Security apparatus. And we know how honest unblemished unbiased unpolitical and disinterested they are in the current fevered atmosphere. Oh, please.
It’s so hard for us to face the harsh, complicated reality that Trump won due to a perfect storm of boring sociological factors like the catastrophic decline in union membership (up to now a shield against racism), “de-industrialization” of whole regions, the plague of state right to work laws, the loss of jobs through automation and anti pollution regulations and massive outsourcing – and oh yes an unpopular Democratic candidate running a dumb campaign.
Until Putin comes crawling on his hands and knees before a Congressional committee to confess his intervention sins, you best go down to the corner grocery and buy a barrel of salt to pour on this Russian-hacking story.
Haven’t we been here before with Saddam Hussein’s invisible – except to neo-cons with eyes fixed on war – chemical and nuclear weapons?
Fake, fake, fake – until we have MULTIPLY SOURCED EVIDENCE BASED proof that smells fresh and good. That comes from other than the “intelligence community”. Since when do we trust them on a political issue in which they have their own pot to stir?
It takes no genius to figure out that any Russian, high or low, bad or good, would prefer a blustering salesman like Trump who has money interests to protect in Russia over Hillary a high minded war hawk who, rightly, has condemned Putin’s bloody imperialist adventures in the Crimea and Ukraine.
Paging Judith Miller!
A CURE FOR DEAFNESS ASIDE FROM READING ORWELL’S ‘POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE’
‘You stopped talking my language; you don’t care about jobs.’ ” – Iowa union members quoted by NYT’s reporter
Trip Gabriel, the NYTimes reporter, found many Trump signs in the front yards of loyal union members who had been Democrats.
Don’t waste your time worrying about Russian hacks or FBI sabotage or ‘fake stories’ about Moscow whores.
The reason we lost is in plain view:
“You stopped talking my language; you don’t care about jobs.”
I felt the same way watching Democratic election rallies. So much of the language – about ‘diversity’, LGBT, gun control, abortion, immigrant rights – missed me by a mile. Painfully, so did some of Bernie’s rote-like speeches about “revolution” that thrilled the young and swayed older voters but not by a significant much.
The nail in the coffin was Hillary’s “we're going to put a lot of (you) coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?” Way out west in Iowa steelworking union members heard us all too clearly.
The Democratic Party top brass couldn’t have cared less about working people because economically and psychologically they’re in the same mind-class as Trump and his swamp gang. They’ve all been to the same good schools.
So it’s not the language that’s at fault but what Trump’s propaganda mistress, Kellyanne Conway, urges us to pay attention to, not what’s on his lips but in his heart.
Our heart was in “cultural issues” not jobs.
A positive step back from the Trump abyss is to exchange our tin ears used to dead language for a pair sensitive to the situation of what the English call “JAM”. Just about managing. Just about keeping our heads above water.
That’s us, surely.
Trip Gabriel, the NYTimes reporter, found many Trump signs in the front yards of loyal union members who had been Democrats.
Don’t waste your time worrying about Russian hacks or FBI sabotage or ‘fake stories’ about Moscow whores.
The reason we lost is in plain view:
“You stopped talking my language; you don’t care about jobs.”
I felt the same way watching Democratic election rallies. So much of the language – about ‘diversity’, LGBT, gun control, abortion, immigrant rights – missed me by a mile. Painfully, so did some of Bernie’s rote-like speeches about “revolution” that thrilled the young and swayed older voters but not by a significant much.
The nail in the coffin was Hillary’s “we're going to put a lot of (you) coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?” Way out west in Iowa steelworking union members heard us all too clearly.
The Democratic Party top brass couldn’t have cared less about working people because economically and psychologically they’re in the same mind-class as Trump and his swamp gang. They’ve all been to the same good schools.
So it’s not the language that’s at fault but what Trump’s propaganda mistress, Kellyanne Conway, urges us to pay attention to, not what’s on his lips but in his heart.
Our heart was in “cultural issues” not jobs.
A positive step back from the Trump abyss is to exchange our tin ears used to dead language for a pair sensitive to the situation of what the English call “JAM”. Just about managing. Just about keeping our heads above water.
That’s us, surely.
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