"The Power Of Good Trouble", said Congressman John Lewis.
"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind," said Mahatma Gandhi.
First, another relevant and informed perspective:
Maybe it's the Republican Party who needs defunding?
First off...
Let's say Trump loses the 2020 election. The next four years will be a nightmare of trying to fix all the damage Trump and the GOP have accomplished. This disaster formerly known as the conservative Republican President Donald Trump.
Giving them the delicious opportunity, while Trump whines in his Twitter background, to claim how defective the new President and Democrats are at running things. Running GOP broken things. Donald Trump broken things. For the first time in US history, the world pity's America. It is easy to destroy, but hard to build and so leaves one open for ridicule and abuse. A Republican mainstay.
As Bernard-Henri Levy said:: "Be wary of Trump."
What did electing Donald Trump president do to America?
For the first time, a conspiracist holds the highest office in the country!
Among so many other travesties and ensuing disasters?
It legitimized a faux successful "businessman", a mentally ill individual.
It legitimized his and others' lies.
It legitimized conspiracies.
It legitimized mental ill-health.
Something set up by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
THAT is not a conspiracy, but a matter of record when Reagan shut down mental institutions. Cut funding for mental health issues. Dumped it all on police leaving so many mentally ill walking the streets, homeless, jailed, and imprisoned.
America has always been a little "buggy". American historian Richard J. Hofstadter labeled it, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Apparently, "Psychological projection is essential to the paranoid style of U.S. politics."
Just look at America today. QAnon? A conspiracy factory of people feeling a lack of control, needing to feel smarter than others. Even if they are not. Just like Donald Trump, their nearly religious leader for many of them.
Not to mention the multitude of political "time bombs" left for the new administration in many and varied ways. Even going beyond the political to literally damaging American families, the middle class and citizens directly, all because that is not the Republicans care or purview. Money is.
All while Dems painfully struggle to make things functional once again. In some cases, struggling against situations that are not even possible to fix. Mainly because as "Defund the Police" indicates, fixes aren't possible and restructuring is necessary. A reorientation to priorities and beliefs is required.
All while the GOP continues to harass and obfuscate, stall and do whatever they can, and did before, as with Obamacare when it began, to challenge and break and refuse to see things work at every turn and opportunity. As long as it is not Republicans running things. Rather than work hand in hand as it should be, and get things done.
Because it's not about the American people with the GOP, or with Donald Trump.
It's about power. About perception of the fragile reality of their reality-altered base.
Now...
First off...
Let's say Trump loses the 2020 election. The next four years will be a nightmare of trying to fix all the damage Trump and the GOP have accomplished. This disaster formerly known as the conservative Republican President Donald Trump.
Giving them the delicious opportunity, while Trump whines in his Twitter background, to claim how defective the new President and Democrats are at running things. Running GOP broken things. Donald Trump broken things. For the first time in US history, the world pity's America. It is easy to destroy, but hard to build and so leaves one open for ridicule and abuse. A Republican mainstay.
As Bernard-Henri Levy said:: "Be wary of Trump."
What did electing Donald Trump president do to America?
For the first time, a conspiracist holds the highest office in the country!
Among so many other travesties and ensuing disasters?
It legitimized a faux successful "businessman", a mentally ill individual.
It legitimized his and others' lies.
It legitimized conspiracies.
It legitimized mental ill-health.
Something set up by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
THAT is not a conspiracy, but a matter of record when Reagan shut down mental institutions. Cut funding for mental health issues. Dumped it all on police leaving so many mentally ill walking the streets, homeless, jailed, and imprisoned.
America has always been a little "buggy". American historian Richard J. Hofstadter labeled it, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Apparently, "Psychological projection is essential to the paranoid style of U.S. politics."
Just look at America today. QAnon? A conspiracy factory of people feeling a lack of control, needing to feel smarter than others. Even if they are not. Just like Donald Trump, their nearly religious leader for many of them.
Not to mention the multitude of political "time bombs" left for the new administration in many and varied ways. Even going beyond the political to literally damaging American families, the middle class and citizens directly, all because that is not the Republicans care or purview. Money is.
All while Dems painfully struggle to make things functional once again. In some cases, struggling against situations that are not even possible to fix. Mainly because as "Defund the Police" indicates, fixes aren't possible and restructuring is necessary. A reorientation to priorities and beliefs is required.
All while the GOP continues to harass and obfuscate, stall and do whatever they can, and did before, as with Obamacare when it began, to challenge and break and refuse to see things work at every turn and opportunity. As long as it is not Republicans running things. Rather than work hand in hand as it should be, and get things done.
Because it's not about the American people with the GOP, or with Donald Trump.
It's about power. About perception of the fragile reality of their reality-altered base.
Now...
Pres. Reagan first defunded social services and our mental health institutions to the point of breaking our nation, dumping that and other services...and REDISTRIBUTING them elsewhere. As with the police, jails, and prisons. Overwhelming them to the point of dysfunction. Damage. And deaths.
Speaking of Pres. Reagan...this: The Reagan Foundation has asked the Trump campaign to completely distance themselves from Ronald Reagan.
I know, right? Pretty much says it all.
To be fair, many of our mental institutions were already broken in the 60s, 70s and 80s. But that was reason to revamp, revision and rebuild. Instead, Reagan gave up and did more damage than anyone else back then.
In typical conservative Republican style austerity thinking, what Reagan did brought us to here, today in having not breaking further, but entirely eliminating some resources, rather than rebuilding them, rebuilding our mental health services and other too many other social services.
All because these "social services" are what? Socialist? Give me a break. That's just sheer ignorance, misunderstanding the meaning of...words. Words used to conflate, distract, obfuscate and reorient for political purposes. And Greed. A central conservative Republican tenet. They ARE the party of business, and more so, big business.
Yes, police need all the money they have and more.
But also... they need their methodologies completely reworked. Many of their current, forced services need to be broken down, replaced, redistributed to those departments in government who need to control them. So they can actually be functional, and useful to American citizens.
What this all means IS a breaking down and rebuilding, reorienting, redistributing in order to be functional, to actually do the jobs they are mandated to do. To bring back services to those who can do functionally them. With all the new information from these past decades, as we really have learned so very much.
Not simply to reopen those services, to let ignorant lawmakers decide how they should function. But to turn power over to those who actually know what they are doing. As with healthcare where insurance companies, legislators have so long tried to manage them. To dictate a doctor's intimate knowledge of a client and their needed medical services. When only the doctor can do that, along with the client, whom we used to designate as "patient".
But no, God no, that would cost money! Yes, service, functional, productive high quality services to save money in the long run, does cost money...now! We have to stop this short sighted, short term thinking so apparent in Republican efforts.
We have learned much these past decades about things the average American citizen, simply has not. And so many lawmakers are too average in their minds and efforts, beliefs and ideologies. Yes, even those from Harvard. Because too many, have taken a good education, and turned it against America. Ted Cruz comes to mind.
People are judging things now on very old information they have, information that has seeped into their minds from the mainstream. The grapevine. Or information they got from very ignorant or divisive, if not partisan articles from their political bubble, in the media or on the internet leading those laypeople to think they actually know something. When surely they do not.
With all the access to information we have today, what we see are people with a vast amount of information, and a very shallow degree of knowledge. Yes, you can talk to a completely stranger, or a person living on the street and they may know about a lot of things. But drill deeper and you find they know very little about each subject, or how it connects to other subjects.
Brief aside: some of those street people if you talk to them, are actually more aware and knowledgeable than many of our lawmakers. To be sure there are many who are uneducated, mentally disabled, if not just stupid. But believe it or not, you can find that in the US Congress today, too. Just listen to them talk on TV sometime. Or listen to "Pres." Donald Trump. Or listen to his niece and clinical psychologist, Mary Trump, or read her book about was a stupid inept disaster her uncle Donald Trump is!
Seriously, Donald Trump has no place in the White House. I have argued before, he never even should have been invited to the White House, let alone given our highest office in America. I mean, come on! Were voters high or something?
America's' biggest problem? Aside from Trump and his political party?
A lack of funding for necessary programs and a lack of understanding them. We need an end to Democrats trying to fix a system broken so much so by Republicans, trying to fix what isn't broken, but simply incorrect, or unnecessary. Or non-existent.
Mostly Republican legislators seem to have no idea what America really needs. It is why they stall actually doing anything so often.
We need to stop trying to fix what cannot be fixed. To rebuild what we truly need. Not by eliminating it but by wisely and effectively rebuilding an infrastructure to PROTECT and SERVE all. Not just some, American citizens. Not just the few rich and powerful.
We just cannot seem to fix our problems. Or maybe we just don't want to? Because we keep trying to fix what was purposely broken and long ago purposefully set on a destructive path. We are now watching ourselves self-destruct. And why? There is no good reason for it.
We need to see where the is the case, and then...dismantle it. And build it again as if for the first time.
But there is more to all this...how? Protest is one. Voting is another. But voting hasn't been working so well for America of late. So? Then what? Well? We're seeing it all around us today. the #MeToo movement kind of started the momentum. Then "BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) kicked things for good reason, into high gear. That began a world wide action as this kind of abuse was happening world wide.
The authoritarian pandemic has encircled the globe. Frighteningly, voters around the world have elected strongmen, authoritarians. But some countries pushed back. France for one. The UK got a smarter Donald Trump clone in Boris Johnson.
Russia in the meantime is having a great time abusing our our media and government. The UK government. The EU government. Working toward the destruction of western democracies. China is fighting for it's own form of global economic domination. Iran, along with Russia and China continue to attack our elections.
But maybe now, just perhaps, we've finally seeing the worm turn. Something, is happening. And like a cornered wounded animal. the authoritarians are fighting back, lashing out, knowing perhaps, that they are on the way out. And good riddance to them. They have hurt us ENOUGH!
But, it is not in our American nature to stand idly by and be beaten while we peacefully protest. It is against our sensibilities to stand and be beaten. Not without reacting to show our displeasure, our anger at injustice, to automatically defend ourselves.
Yet, we need to evoke "The Power of Good Trouble", as the sadly so recently late Congressman John Lewis had said.
Still, it is not in our American nature to stand idly by like Blacks in the South in the 1950s and 60s knowing what would happen if there were reactions other than peace to their abuse in protesting abuse.
It is not in our American nature to stand idly by like emancipation protesters in India who walked with Gandhi, while being beaten and shot, murdered in our own streets. Streets that we have paid for. Beaten and killed by our own police, who we have paid for. Knowing that if we struck back, entire protests would be slaughtered as they would have been and at least once were, by the British army. By "their" government. Which was never really "their" government.
Yet, time and again peaceful protests around the world have won. But through much pain and death. And are Americans willing and able for that? Going to war, dying with a weapon in your hand, having the opportunity to fight back is one thing. To stand idly by as you are beat into the ground, to survive with permanent damage or be murdered on the spot in order to horrify the country and the world at large, is quite another thing entirely.
I get that. We have a problem with authority. And yet, the conservative side of America who has always had a problem with authority suddenly under this Trump administration, seems strangely quiet about all that. Now they are angry at those rebuking authority. Once paranoid and angered by the potential of the government's "jack booted thugs" coming for them, now those are their guys?
Are we winning now? These protests? As this illiberal, authoritarian criminal president turns all against us and claims votes from our pain and righteous protesting?
ARE we winning? Or is this a stalemate? How can we break through the wall to overwhelm the other side? Sometimes a stalemate is a win. Sometimes it is a breathing moment, where you can turn the tide and in the end, win the day.
Are we winning the day? Surely, the 2020 election results will prove that one way or another.
The enemy now is our own delusional backward priorities as so well exemplified in too many of our laws. In the bigoted and ignorant attitudes of far too many American citizens. In our overtaken government, surely in these past four years. Overtaken by despicably illiberal Republican abuse for forty years now. And surely now by this conservative mental defect of a Republican president, this Donald Trump administration.
FIGHT BACK, does not mean to fight back any more than "defund the police" actually means to defund the police. In that vein, we also need to defund this broken zombie, Republican party. A party that disdains the average American citizen, but is in a never ending honeymoon with the wealthy and powerful, with corporations, big business, industry, and the military industrial complex. The corporate/ military/ industrial complex.
Authoritarians like Trump grin as they use ever-bigger violence against protesters violence. After all, they have the entire government on their side and too many laws. Along with far too much power in the presidency. Power that even Republicans have complained about for years now that has gotten only worse.
As the world watches our pain and self-destruction in abject horror.
We all need to wake up.
Including those violent protesting who think they have already woken up but have fallen into a pattern of taking one step forward and being pushed three steps back.
We need to re-evoke "The Power of Good Trouble". And deal with it until we succeed.
Speaking of Pres. Reagan...this: The Reagan Foundation has asked the Trump campaign to completely distance themselves from Ronald Reagan.
I know, right? Pretty much says it all.
To be fair, many of our mental institutions were already broken in the 60s, 70s and 80s. But that was reason to revamp, revision and rebuild. Instead, Reagan gave up and did more damage than anyone else back then.
In typical conservative Republican style austerity thinking, what Reagan did brought us to here, today in having not breaking further, but entirely eliminating some resources, rather than rebuilding them, rebuilding our mental health services and other too many other social services.
All because these "social services" are what? Socialist? Give me a break. That's just sheer ignorance, misunderstanding the meaning of...words. Words used to conflate, distract, obfuscate and reorient for political purposes. And Greed. A central conservative Republican tenet. They ARE the party of business, and more so, big business.
Yes, police need all the money they have and more.
But also... they need their methodologies completely reworked. Many of their current, forced services need to be broken down, replaced, redistributed to those departments in government who need to control them. So they can actually be functional, and useful to American citizens.
What this all means IS a breaking down and rebuilding, reorienting, redistributing in order to be functional, to actually do the jobs they are mandated to do. To bring back services to those who can do functionally them. With all the new information from these past decades, as we really have learned so very much.
Not simply to reopen those services, to let ignorant lawmakers decide how they should function. But to turn power over to those who actually know what they are doing. As with healthcare where insurance companies, legislators have so long tried to manage them. To dictate a doctor's intimate knowledge of a client and their needed medical services. When only the doctor can do that, along with the client, whom we used to designate as "patient".
But no, God no, that would cost money! Yes, service, functional, productive high quality services to save money in the long run, does cost money...now! We have to stop this short sighted, short term thinking so apparent in Republican efforts.
We have learned much these past decades about things the average American citizen, simply has not. And so many lawmakers are too average in their minds and efforts, beliefs and ideologies. Yes, even those from Harvard. Because too many, have taken a good education, and turned it against America. Ted Cruz comes to mind.
People are judging things now on very old information they have, information that has seeped into their minds from the mainstream. The grapevine. Or information they got from very ignorant or divisive, if not partisan articles from their political bubble, in the media or on the internet leading those laypeople to think they actually know something. When surely they do not.
With all the access to information we have today, what we see are people with a vast amount of information, and a very shallow degree of knowledge. Yes, you can talk to a completely stranger, or a person living on the street and they may know about a lot of things. But drill deeper and you find they know very little about each subject, or how it connects to other subjects.
Brief aside: some of those street people if you talk to them, are actually more aware and knowledgeable than many of our lawmakers. To be sure there are many who are uneducated, mentally disabled, if not just stupid. But believe it or not, you can find that in the US Congress today, too. Just listen to them talk on TV sometime. Or listen to "Pres." Donald Trump. Or listen to his niece and clinical psychologist, Mary Trump, or read her book about was a stupid inept disaster her uncle Donald Trump is!
Seriously, Donald Trump has no place in the White House. I have argued before, he never even should have been invited to the White House, let alone given our highest office in America. I mean, come on! Were voters high or something?
America's' biggest problem? Aside from Trump and his political party?
A lack of funding for necessary programs and a lack of understanding them. We need an end to Democrats trying to fix a system broken so much so by Republicans, trying to fix what isn't broken, but simply incorrect, or unnecessary. Or non-existent.
Mostly Republican legislators seem to have no idea what America really needs. It is why they stall actually doing anything so often.
We need to stop trying to fix what cannot be fixed. To rebuild what we truly need. Not by eliminating it but by wisely and effectively rebuilding an infrastructure to PROTECT and SERVE all. Not just some, American citizens. Not just the few rich and powerful.
We just cannot seem to fix our problems. Or maybe we just don't want to? Because we keep trying to fix what was purposely broken and long ago purposefully set on a destructive path. We are now watching ourselves self-destruct. And why? There is no good reason for it.
We need to see where the is the case, and then...dismantle it. And build it again as if for the first time.
But there is more to all this...how? Protest is one. Voting is another. But voting hasn't been working so well for America of late. So? Then what? Well? We're seeing it all around us today. the #MeToo movement kind of started the momentum. Then "BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) kicked things for good reason, into high gear. That began a world wide action as this kind of abuse was happening world wide.
The authoritarian pandemic has encircled the globe. Frighteningly, voters around the world have elected strongmen, authoritarians. But some countries pushed back. France for one. The UK got a smarter Donald Trump clone in Boris Johnson.
Russia in the meantime is having a great time abusing our our media and government. The UK government. The EU government. Working toward the destruction of western democracies. China is fighting for it's own form of global economic domination. Iran, along with Russia and China continue to attack our elections.
But maybe now, just perhaps, we've finally seeing the worm turn. Something, is happening. And like a cornered wounded animal. the authoritarians are fighting back, lashing out, knowing perhaps, that they are on the way out. And good riddance to them. They have hurt us ENOUGH!
But, it is not in our American nature to stand idly by and be beaten while we peacefully protest. It is against our sensibilities to stand and be beaten. Not without reacting to show our displeasure, our anger at injustice, to automatically defend ourselves.
Yet, we need to evoke "The Power of Good Trouble", as the sadly so recently late Congressman John Lewis had said.
Still, it is not in our American nature to stand idly by like Blacks in the South in the 1950s and 60s knowing what would happen if there were reactions other than peace to their abuse in protesting abuse.
It is not in our American nature to stand idly by like emancipation protesters in India who walked with Gandhi, while being beaten and shot, murdered in our own streets. Streets that we have paid for. Beaten and killed by our own police, who we have paid for. Knowing that if we struck back, entire protests would be slaughtered as they would have been and at least once were, by the British army. By "their" government. Which was never really "their" government.
Yet, time and again peaceful protests around the world have won. But through much pain and death. And are Americans willing and able for that? Going to war, dying with a weapon in your hand, having the opportunity to fight back is one thing. To stand idly by as you are beat into the ground, to survive with permanent damage or be murdered on the spot in order to horrify the country and the world at large, is quite another thing entirely.
I get that. We have a problem with authority. And yet, the conservative side of America who has always had a problem with authority suddenly under this Trump administration, seems strangely quiet about all that. Now they are angry at those rebuking authority. Once paranoid and angered by the potential of the government's "jack booted thugs" coming for them, now those are their guys?
Are we winning now? These protests? As this illiberal, authoritarian criminal president turns all against us and claims votes from our pain and righteous protesting?
ARE we winning? Or is this a stalemate? How can we break through the wall to overwhelm the other side? Sometimes a stalemate is a win. Sometimes it is a breathing moment, where you can turn the tide and in the end, win the day.
Are we winning the day? Surely, the 2020 election results will prove that one way or another.
The enemy now is our own delusional backward priorities as so well exemplified in too many of our laws. In the bigoted and ignorant attitudes of far too many American citizens. In our overtaken government, surely in these past four years. Overtaken by despicably illiberal Republican abuse for forty years now. And surely now by this conservative mental defect of a Republican president, this Donald Trump administration.
FIGHT BACK, does not mean to fight back any more than "defund the police" actually means to defund the police. In that vein, we also need to defund this broken zombie, Republican party. A party that disdains the average American citizen, but is in a never ending honeymoon with the wealthy and powerful, with corporations, big business, industry, and the military industrial complex. The corporate/ military/ industrial complex.
Authoritarians like Trump grin as they use ever-bigger violence against protesters violence. After all, they have the entire government on their side and too many laws. Along with far too much power in the presidency. Power that even Republicans have complained about for years now that has gotten only worse.
As the world watches our pain and self-destruction in abject horror.
We all need to wake up.
Including those violent protesting who think they have already woken up but have fallen into a pattern of taking one step forward and being pushed three steps back.
We need to re-evoke "The Power of Good Trouble". And deal with it until we succeed.
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