Author: Philo
It’s Not Much, but…
It’s not much, but it’s all we have. Our vote. Our vote has been taken away from us by greed and selfishness, by apathy and laziness. Our vote, however, hopefully, can still swing the power of probability in a positive direction. Our vote. Your vote. My vote. This one concept can change the world if we use it.
Look at the facts; look at the recorded history of Donald Trump. Look at the electoral college, and what is was supposed to be and what it has devolved into. Put down your flags and platitudes and simply see for what it is. Calm your empty hatred and turn off the voice that has been put into your head. Forget god and think about the people around you. Learn! Do not accept. And you, too, have a vote.
And forget your personal interests, and your “most important” politic. Your choice is yours no matter. You had nothing to do with the color of your skin. But always remember that the right and the good is much broader than your personal identity, your personhood. You only matter because a society says that you do. And society is only as good or bad as you make it. And you, too, have a vote.
There is only one choice here. One choice against a corporate conglomerate, a fascist, an oligarchy. The choice may not be the one you want but this is not about you. This is about an idea, a story that we write. This about an ongoing battle against those that would control and take. Be a giver. Give up your high and mighty ethic, your most important identity, your nationalism, your hatred and vote as an individual for a better society.
It’s True: Freedom is Not Free
With the exception of religion, corporations are the leading cause of misery and pain for most of humanity. Corporate greed is real and very dangerous.
The corporate world as it is defined today is a consequent of the Mont Pelerin Society of the 20’s and 30’s and now because of the political maneuvering of the Republican party corporations have the rights of individuals. Our government, on the other hand once valued and funded, has been devalued, unempowered and starved by a corporate economy known as neo-liberalism.
Donald Trump and the Republican party today are nothing more than an arm of the neo-liberal economy and a move by corporations (coupled with religious nationalism) to overthrow any vestige of a working democracy that this country (the USA) has ever had. There is no other word for this oligarchic and theocratic move than neo-fascism.
Trump’s neo-fascist tendencies and the Republican’s continued support of him are barely veiled. Make no mistake. None. A vote for Donald Trump and the Republican party on November 4th is a vote for a neo-fascist backed by corporate and religious fanatics. It is true: freedom is not free. And we must fight this onslaught of greed and power or we will not be free from their sick worldview.
Vote Above Your IQ
The choice is not difficult. The choice should be clear. If it is not, then the issue lies within you and cannot be repaired with a vote, a choice. To choose based upon your own selfish nature is not a choice. We do this naturally. To vote based on your own desires and nothing else is not a choice. We do this naturally.
Put aside your blind ideologies, go beyond your nature; see beyond your personal desires. Think. Think about what we vote for. It is not for ourselves, but for a country that we all live in. We ALL live in. We are all tired of being lied to; there is nothing new there. But we must change that and in order to do so, we give the country that we live in a chance.
Free yourself from those determined thoughts, that anger that drives you. Use your intellect. History speaks for itself and Donald Trump and the Republicans have spoken loud and clear in the last eight years. Democracy is not perfect and there is work for us all to do. But to dismiss the obvious choice at this point is nothing more than a death knell.
Do us all a favor: vote, but vote above your IQ.
Republican Pieces of…Poor Politicians
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/19/lindsey-graham-electoral-vote-change-nebraska
Republicans are (again) trying to overturn the public desire for progress in many areas by playing a dirty game. Lindsay Graham among others is playing fast and loose with the concept of the electoral college, this time in Nebraska.
As it becomes obvious that Kamala Harris is on a political roll on all fronts, a sign that the public endorses her as the next leader of this country, Republicans dismiss this and other signs and move forward with legal moves to change the way our political leaders are chosen, and often take away the chance for people to have their votes count in that process.
While this cannot be surprising, it cannot be dismissed. Republicans have gone above and beyond in showing their willingness to cheat using law. They continue to warrant their heinous and unjust acts by leaning on the law. This move, successful or not, is just another example.
Donald Trump is losing but we must remember that this does not mean that Kamala Harris will take the presidency or that the US political system is out of the woods. Trump has shown his willingness to overthrow and to thwart public desires for the direction that this country will go in. He knows he has a chance because he is working within a corrupt system.
To dislodge the dirt that has come to clog up American politics we must do all that we can to limit Republican control in Congress. This starts with disallowing Trump into the Whitehouse. While the presidency may or may not simply be a figurehead, it is an important figurehead.
Do not let pathetic politicians such as Lindsay Graham and many others disavow their promise to do what is right for this country. We the people must force them to do what is right for this country.
Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: The Pathetic and Proudly Stupid
Americans come from a long line of fearful, foreboding theocrats that probably make up a majority of the population. And that is a problem. they demand that everyone bow down to their particular form of idiotic beliefs and that more so, these beliefs become the law of the land. Trump and the Republican party have worked hard to make sure their wishes come true, and have had only one thing to say: yes.
The probability that Trump himself is even remotely religious is small and if he is, he is at best the cafeteria-style believer if he thinks of it at all. It would seem that Trump and his followers would have to face the actual truth of the matter at some point, but Trump and his cohorts don’t worry about that because they can simply create “alternative-facts” and sell them with a little Jesus juice on the side.
This is all to say that the Republican-Christian-nationalistic machine is in full force. It eats the gullible and pisses out rightwing fanatics with a love of guns, god and greed.
There’s a rumbling in the background and if we put down our phones we can almost hear the chanting.
“Give up critical thinking for Christ!” is the mantra that they yell and that din that is getting louder and louder them on their way to the Whitehouse.
Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: The Destruction of Oversight
So what is the goal of the Republican party, coupled with corporations and religion? Plain and simply put: the destruction of any and all oversight and the implementation of a plutocratic government, with autocratic tendencies. In essence, the destruction of the American federal government.[i]
The volatile mixture of planned and orchestrated confusion, religious belief and the traditional viewpoint of American individuality amounts to a hatred of any oversight by any government. This, in essence, is the argument made by corporations.
With legal loopholes that allowed unregulated lobbying and Citizens United which allowed unlimited monies to buy governmental policies corporations no longer must adhere to the law. Having the same rights as individuals corporations can, in essence “run for office” and they have as Donald Trump. Now instead of having to adhere to law, the have the power to make law. It is this power that destroys the government.
Donald Trump and the Republican movement are almost literally greed incarnate. While it is not clear why the leader of a union would stand and support the Republican movement, it is clear what the end-goal of Donald Trump and the Republicans who support him is: the annihilation of the American Federal Government.
[i] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/this-is-how-the-republican-party-plans-to-destroy-the-federal-government/
Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: The New Republic of America
Political terminology regarding American political parties has changed over time, but the basic premises of the two remaining party’s arguments never has. “Democrats” have represented a working federal government while the Republicans have had as their goal, the abolishment of a federal government. As Grover Norquist so eloquently put it: “to reduce [the government] to the size where [they] can drag it into the bathroom and drown it…”[i]
The Republican ideology does, in fact, support a free market capitalist society, but only for the bottom ninety-five[ii] percentile of the American public. The top 1% of the country lives by an entirely different set of rules, expecting to be bailed out (by the American public) for being “too big to fail”, enjoying legal tax loopholes that allow for the richest individuals in the United States to pay little and in some cases, no taxes.
In essence, what the Republican’s wet-dream amounts to is shareholder capitalism. Shareholder capitalism maximizes profits for investors rather than stakeholders. It does nothing for society, produces no goods and does not add to the community in any way. Shareholder capitalism is bad for everyone except those investors that have access to the hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, of dollars it takes to play the shareholder game.[iii]
Shareholder capitalism will be the ruination of the United States, of a civilization and all the while the new republicans led by Trump and bolstered by Christian nationalism eggs on the end of the world for nothing more than profit.
[i] https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-drowning-government-in-the-bathtub-111333
[ii] More or less. The number is probably larger given that the top .01% of this country owns all of the large, international corporations.
[iii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2020/01/05/why-stakeholder-capitalism-will-fail/?sh=4006f19c785a
In September 1970 Milton Friedman published an article in The New York Times Magazine, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.”
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0212/027.html?sh=4a381a9d6541
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Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: The Few, The Proud
The term, military-industrial complex, was made famous by Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell speech..[i] Since then Eisenhower’s fears have become a reality in more ways than one. First, the sheer amount of money spent on military undermines government’s stated purpose of taking care of its citizens.[ii] Furthermore, the military is now a tool used to indoctrinate and capture America’s delusionally religious and its poor. Since the fifties, the religious and nationalistic rhetoric used by the conservative movement has been used to create and stoke a tribalistic corporate war machine.
While flags wave in the front yards of the working class, opportunities that would have otherwise actually helped economically are pulled out from under them while the industries that support and supply the military continue to get richer. Visit any impoverished area and what becomes apparent is the presence of military enlistment programs and churches, the two often working together. The poor have become nothing more than indoctrinated, cheap labor for the endless wars created and waged by the corporate complex itself.[iii]. This is not a governmental problem, as Trump and the Republicans claim, it is a corporate/autocratic problem led primarily by Trump and the Republicans.
The only difference between Eisenhower and the Republicans now led by the Trump administration is that Trump simply accepts as a good Eisenhower’s fears. Eisenhower’s worries concerning a growing military-industrial complex has now mutated into an industrial-military complex. The marine motto: the few, the proud… still rings true, but the few and the proud are now the richest in 1%.
[i] https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/military-industrial-complex
[ii] https://borgenproject.org/the-relationship-between-the-military-and-global-poverty/
[iii] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar
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Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: Civility and Courage
The new conservative movement, led for four years by the Trump administration, has made a mockery of social norms that have held this country together, that have made it possible for us as a nation to work together despite differences. These attacks on social norms are often dismissed as unimportant, but the fact of the matter is, is that social norms such as consideration and courtesy make up the foundation of civilization.
But the apathy towards the unraveling of common courtesy and consideration for others is perhaps more dangerous than the unravelling itself. As the world has watched the political discourse of America devolve into personal attacks, blatant lies, alternative “facts”, and even criminal slander, Trump has done nothing other than fan the flames of tribalism and nationalism and his own psychopathic agenda. Worse, this reinvention of politics into a team sports, primarily bolstered by the conservative movement since Eisenhower, adds fuel to the already out of control fire of lies that continue to undermine the concept of a common good.
If there is a solution to the mess that Trump and the conservative movement continue to create it will have to include civil, political discourse and the acceptance of an objective reality (i.e. alternative “facts” are simply delusional lies at best). But it must not include bowing down to the lies, the greed, and the stupidity that have come to define the Republican party, Donald Trump and his followers. Courtesy does not mean kowtowing and consideration does not imply acceptance and tolerance at any and all costs.
The Armchair Philosopher 