Riding the Bull

As I write this, we are in "heads on fire" territory with the rise and successful election of Donald Trump -- again, and this time with a more dangerous crew and a determination to seek revenge. But we must look at how we got here to rationally find a way beyond it.

First we have to place the blame on the Democrats who, since the Clinton administration, have taken up Reaganomics or neoliberalism and pushing global corporate dominance and U.S. hegemony. The Clintons created the rust belt, aiding the move of productive work to low-wage countries from China to Mexico to the Marshall Islands. They also destroyed the Democratic party moving it from the New Deal to the Raw Deal, destroying "welfare as we knew it" and crippling any safety net we had.

The Democrats, since the ascension of the Clintons have been deafened by their own class arrogance refusing to hear anything that didn't fit their agenda with most of their hatred and vitriol targeting progressives. Not only did they adopt and implement a failed economic model and stick to it, they joined with the neocon warmongers and, under Biden's boneheaded misleadership, stubbornly continue to arm genocide in Palestine and to push us into direct armed conflict with Russia -- WW III.

This year, after much cajoling, Biden was convinced to step aside, his foreign policies being unpopular and his cognition obviously failing. The Democratic leadership than foisted Kamala Harris on us warning all others against even thinking of challenging her in the most obviously pre-scripted "convention" in our history. This phony glee-fest, locking out decency demonstrated to anyone who cared to notice that, like the zombie ant fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the Democratic party has become a hollow zombie controlled fully by the Clinton DNC; no dissent would be heard, no integrity tolerated as it mechanically stepped to the right. Kamala Harris was a pure DNC product, a honed and controlled Stepford candidate, repeating her lines, triangulating on issues as instructed, all smiles (sneers reserved for anyone objecting to genocide). Walz was much the same, a putty-faced companion whose grand smile can go south morphing to monstrous scowl on a moment's notice. He who pushed that filthy tar sands pipeline through his own state.

At this crucial moment in history, moments from annihilation amid mounting atrocities and spreading war, inseparable from expanding climate catastrophe, we were presented with the stringently limited choice. Either the Maga fascists targeting women, minorities, immigrants, the gender disparate and national collapse or genocide, arrogant empire, WWIII and a likely nuclear annihilation.

Many understandably withheld support -- even while voting to protect abortion rights and to raise the minimum wage. As Dennis Kucinich opined shorty after the results were undeniable, the combination of a punishing economy, at least for the working class and poor, combined with Biden taking us to the rim of WW III and Harris not only refusing to distance herself from an ongoing genocide and lining up with neocons led to a massive repudiation and defeat.

The question is not if Democrats will learn anything, we know they will not. The more pressing question is what we will learn and do differently. Movements often begin as a reaction to terrible times. Can we build a left/labor/ eco-activist alliance around a simple shared vision for a more civilized and truly representative movement or are we too fractured and divided by sectarianism and identity politics?

As for the Democrats, the best possibility would be a formal split between corporate “centrists” and progressives with the formation of a progressive party or a progressive coalition party including DSA, progressive Democrats, Labor, the Poor People's Camapign. eco-activist groups and others of like mind.

Meanwhile, despite what terrified democrats and liberals fear, this is not Wiemar Germany or even the Zionist terror state. Most Americans didn't vote and the margin of victory, less than 2%,is hardly a popular mandate. As for the incoming gang, they have 2 years before the midterms to wreak what damage they can but are crippled from the gate.

While politics should not be likened to sports, this incoming administration reminds me of bull riding. In bull riding, the bulls are expected to be fearsome, unpredictable and dangerous. The trick is to know the creature and stay on for 8 seconds in hopes of winning money.

In this regard, and especially considering the venal and vacuous opportunists so far picked for cabinet positions, I see much resemblance between the Trump admin and bull riding. Trump is the angry and unpredictable bull here and the players are either those who feel, as Elon Musk, that they can profit by riding him as long as possible, the vacuous opportunists like Gabbard, and those trying to corral the mad beast and limit the damage. In any case, though damage will be done, it cannot be anything but a Vaudevillian carnival of competitive opportunism limited by it's own bumbling, fumbling, competitive myopic idiocy.

On what positive side there is, Biden's continuing efforts aside, we may have averted WW III. Also, whenever the Republicans are dominant, resistance and activism increase. We must make the best of that, building strength from solidarity and on vital issues, from human rights and labor rights, to climate action and of course economics. This moment necessitates the long overdue building Progressive Peoples Party, expanding our cultural and media outreach to counter the success of extreme-right brainwash media and building a movement to overthrow oppressive and ecocidal corporate rule.

MAGA Redux 2024
A howling darkness descends –
Half-assed liberals
spout nonsense
missing their complicity
“misreading” truths and warnings
they cursed –
hypocrisies still echoing
between tears of hopeless defeat

The best of us must come together
united
in a common defiance forged
of militant love and solidarity

The promise of tomorrow’s backlash
begins today.

 

Matriotism: An Evolutionary Catalyst for a Living Future

The world, of which we are a part, is a dynamic, living thing, its circulating magma, drifting plates dynamic atmosphere and seas are organs of a living entity. Our position in relation to our star and our rich composition render Earth a Petri dish, or more accurately, a great Uterus, giving birth to life itself in all it's myriad and adapting forms. Very few single life forms can exist on their own and most are dependent on many others just to exist. Life on our small world is symbiosis, each form continuing to exist or dying out based on symbiotic balance and made possible by planetary forces and conditions we are only beginning to understand.

Countries and Nation States are very recent inventions of a particular species of territorial mammal which are us. In the relatively short time "nations" as we know them have existed, the results have been barbaric spreads of violence, mass murder and brutal subjugations. We call these "conquests" and "slavery" and they have lead to cycles of tyranny, resentments, resistance and more wars with designated "borders" ever changing. Our world is littered with the mass graves and broken ruins that define our history.

As we clever hominids learned to alter the elemental makeup of the world, we developed technology -- often at the expense of poisoning and despoliation, like a disease harming the larger body on which our existence depends. Our wars and our technology can no longer be separated from destructive harm to our great mother or to the symbiotic balance upon which life depends. We've even created and continue to stockpile weapons designed to end life on our world. We seem trapped in our cycle of destructive behavior driven by continuing resentments, outdated territorialisms, prejudices and fears. We are led by those who hoard the most of what we produce, who project power -- the Alphas among us who are revered and feared for possessing the most destructive potential. We have developed a system of planetary destruction which oppresses most of us just for food and shelter in orer to further enrich a very few. Such a system a system based on competitive growth in a world of finite resources is the basis of continuing wars for resource hegemony ignoring and destroying in the process the greatest resource of all -- life itself.

And we celebrate this. We wave various symbols and flags for which many would kill and die. We beat our chests with pride and revere our founding alphas even as we are divided and despise each other like soccer fans or turf-conscious gangs as our mutual air, water and food are poisoned, our personal resources always stressed and the fellow creatures on which we depend die off.

Is there a way out of this? Is it too late? I don't know but I believe it must begin by changing our basic concepts. Rejecting widely accepted concepts basic to existing power structures has always been considered blasphemy -- and I am a proud blasphemer rejecting bronze age mysticism, nationalism and hierarchical power based on greed or delusions of control. I understand that such basic concepts, destructive or constructive, are based in and fed by culture. Culture defines how we see the world and ourselves in it. It defines how we see and treat others. This is why I write and why I have published a literary journal the Blue Collar Review for over 27 years as a way of overcoing cultivated divsion and effecting cultural transformation. Those in power too understand culture and do everything they can to divide and manipulate us in order to maintain their dominance.

If we are to make the changes necessary for our survival, we have to understand and overcome our primary obstacle -- the rule of ecocidal corporate interests and their power over governments. Only then will we be able to bring our ways of living back into balance with our geophysical reality and the requirements of our living world, replacing endless growth with rational de-growth. Replacing Toxic nationalisms with healthy internationalism, replacing competitive oligarchy with cooperative bottom up democracy which nourishes us, rather than destroyng the living world of which we are a part.

We must reject blind loyalty to political systems and parties. We must reject the concept of nation states, recognizing them as an obsolete obstacle to needed global community. We need to reject technologies that threatens all life. We must replace loyalty to tribe and nation with love and loyalty to our Earth mother, to each other, and to restoring and protecting the symbiotic balance of all life, of which we are mutually dependent part. Thus, rejecting "patriotism," I am a Matriot and hope you recognize that you are as well, or will join in that identification as part of one big Earth family -- not just we humans, but encompassing all living things in our symbiotic biosphere for our mutual health and preservation. Together we need to build a Matriot Movement which must be a catalyst for needed change, a moment of evolution where our species can come of age and become truly civilized.

Patriotism is the ego-centric, hyper-national alliegacne to competitive destruction and death. Matriotism is the worship and loyalty to earth and to life.

The Truth is Incontrovertible

Today will live on in history as a day that israeli Genocide is exposed. Thank you South Africa!