The Return of Democratic Socialism
Democratic socialism used to be a vibrant force in American life. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Socialist Party of America, headed by the charismatic union leader, Eugene V. Debs, grew rapidly, much like its sister parties in Europe and elsewhere: the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Australian Labor Party, and dozens of similar parties that voters chose to govern their countries. Publicizing its ideas through articles, lectures, rallies, and hundreds of party newspapers, America’s Socialist Party elected an estimated 1,200 public officials, including 79 mayors, in 340 cities, as well as numerous members of state legislatures and two members of Congress. Once in office, the party implemented a broad range of social reforms designed to curb corporate abuses, democratize the economy, and improve the lives of working class Americans. Even on the national level, the Socialist Party became a major player in American politics. In 1912, when Woodrow Wilson’s six million votes gave him the presidency, Debs–his Socialist Party opponent–drew vast, adoring crowds and garnered nearly a million.
This promising beginning, however, abruptly came to an end. Socialist Party criticism of World War I led to a ferocious government crackdown on the party, including raids on its offices, censorship of its newspapers, and imprisonment of its leaders, including Debs. In addition, when Bolshevik revolutionaries seized power in Russia and established the Soviet Union, they denounced democratic socialist parties and established rival Communist parties under Soviet control to spark revolutions. In the United States, the Socialists fiercely rejected this Communist model. But the advent of Communism sharply divided the American Left and, worse yet, confused many Americans about the differences between Socialists and Communists. Although the Socialist Party lingered on during the 1920s and 1930s, many individual Socialists simply moved into the Democratic Party, particularly after its New Deal programs began to steal the Socialist thunder.
The Socialist Party’s situation grew even more desperate during the Cold War. With the Communists serving as cheerleaders for the Soviet Union, Americans often viewed them as, at best, apologists for a dictatorship or, at worst, subversives and traitors. And the Socialists were often mistakenly viewed the same way. By the 1970s, the once-thriving Socialist Party was almost non-existent. Some of its remaining activists, led by Michael Harrington, broke away and organized the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which later morphed into Democratic Socialists of American–a group that dropped third party campaigns, called attention to the value of democratic socialist programs, and worked with progressive forces in the Democratic party to secure them. But, for several decades, it made little headway.
And, then, remarkably, democratic socialism began to revive. Of course, it had never entirely disappeared, and occasional polls found small-scale support for it. But, in December 2011, a startling 31 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center said that they had a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” with young people, Blacks, and Hispanics showing the greatest enthusiasm. In November 2012, a Gallup survey found that 39 percent of Americans had a positive reaction to “socialism,” including 53 percent of Democrats.
Why the rising tide of support for socialism in recent years? One key factor was certainly a popular backlash against the growing economic instability and inequality in America fostered by brazen corporate greed, exploitation, and control of public policy. In addition, college-educated young people–saddled with enormous tuition debt, often under-employed, and with little recollection of the Soviet nightmare–began to discover the great untold political story of the postwar years, the remarkable success of European social democracy.
Of course, Bernie Sanders played an important role in this public reappraisal of democratic socialism. Once a member of the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth group of the old Socialist Party, Sanders forged a successful political career as an independent, serving as a popular mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a U.S. Congressman, and, eventually, a U.S. Senator. During these years he consistently attacked the greed of the wealthy and their corporations, assailed economic and social inequality, and stood up for workers and other ordinary Americans. For many on the American Left, he provided a shining example of the continued relevance of democratic socialism in America.
Sanders’s plunge into the Democratic Presidential primaries, though, drew the attention of a much larger audience–and, as it turned out, a surprisingly sympathetic one. Although the communications media were quick to point out that he was a socialist, a fact that many assumed would marginalize him, he didn’t run away from the label. Perhaps most important, he presented a democratic socialist program in tune with the views of many Americans: universal healthcare (Medicare for All); tuition-free public college; a $15/hour minimum wage; increased Social Security benefits; higher taxes on the wealthy; big money out of politics; and a less militaristic foreign policy.
This sounded good to large numbers of voters. In June 2015, shortly after Sanders launched his campaign, a Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Democrats, 49 percent of independents, and 26 percent of Republicans were willing to support a socialist if he were the candidate of their party. This included 69 percent of Americans 18 to 29 years of age and 50 percent of those between 30 and 49 years of age. To the shock (and frequent dismay) of the political pundits, Sanders’s poll numbers rose steadily until they rivaled those of Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, and he won 20 of the Democratic state primaries and caucuses conducted so far. Indeed, polls showed that, if he became the Democratic nominee, he would win a landslide victory in the race for President.
But whether or not Sanders reaches the White House, it’s clear that democratic socialism has made a comeback in American life.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?
Poverty, Militarism, and Public Schools
What’s the difference between education and obedience? If you see very little, you probably have no problem with the militarization of the American school system — or rather, the militarization of the impoverished schools . . . the ones that can’t afford new textbooks or functional plumbing, much less art supplies or band equipment. My town, Chicago, is a case study in this national trend.
The Pentagon has been eyeing these schools — broken and gang-ridden — for a decade now, and seeing its future there. It comes in like a cammy-clad Santa, bringing money and discipline. In return it gets young minds to shape, to (I fear) possess: to turn into the next generation of soldiers, available for the coming wars.
The United States no longer has a draft because the nation no longer believes in war, except abstractly, as background noise. But it has an economic draft: It claims recruits largely from the neighborhoods of hopelessness. Joining the U.S. military is the only opportunity available to millions of young Americans to escape poverty. We have no government programs to build the infrastructure of peace and environmental sustainability — we can’t afford that, so it has to happen on its own (or not at all) — but our military marches on, funded at more than half a trillion dollars a year, into ever more pointless wars of aggression.
Glory, glory hallelujah. I’d never been to a Memorial Day parade in my life, but I went to this year’s parade in downtown Chicago because members of the Chicago chapter of Veterans for Peace were going to be there, protesting the militarization of the city’s schools.
I arrived as the parade was still assembling itself along Wacker Drive. What I saw, along with the Humvees and the floats (Gold Star Families of the Fallen, Paralyzed Veterans of America: Making a difference for 70 years) were thousands of young people — mostly kids of color, of course — bedecked in various uniforms, standing in formation as martial music erupted sporadically, driven by the drumbeat of certainty. Some of the boys and girls seemed as young as 10 or 11. One boy walked past me twirling a rifle like it was a baton. Was it real? Was it loaded?
The concept of America is a totally military phenomenon, I thought as I walked along the parade route. This is what holds it together, not culturally, but as a legally organized entity. The flags, the rifles, the Humvees, the names of the dead . . . the uniformed children. For a moment I wondered if I could continue calling myself an American.
Then I met up with the Vets for Peace people at State and Lake — a small group of men and women handing out stickers that read: “No military in Chicago Public Schools. Education, not militarization.”
“The idea is, just by being here, we’re having people stop for a moment and think about the militarization of Chicago schools,” Kevin Merwin told me. “There’s opposition to the wholesale militarization of youth in Chicago. It’s the most militarized school system in the country, if not the world.”
Indeed, according to various sources, there are between 9,000 and 10,000 young people in the Pentagon’s JROTC program, with “military academies” — often in spite of furious community opposition — taking over portions of 45 of the city’s 104 high schools.
“Kids in seventh grade are being rolled up into this Memorial Day parade,” Merwin said. “We’re inculcating kids into the military system at a young age — the kind of thing we criticized the Soviet Union for back in the day. And it’s mostly kids of color.”
Ann Jones, addressing this hypocrisy, pointed out in an excellent essay that Congress actually passed an act in 2008 — the Child Soldiers Prevention Act — that was “designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid.”
However, not surprisingly, the economic interests of the military-industrial complex eventually gutted the intention of this rare bit of compassionate legislation. Five of the 10 countries on the child-solider list, Chad, South Sudan, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, have been granted “waivers” so they can continue to purchase American weapons.
“Too bad for the young — and the future — of those countries,” Jones wrote. “But look at it this way: Why should Washington help the children of Sudan or Yemen escape war when it spares no expense right here at home to press our own impressionable, idealistic, ambitious American kids into military ‘service’?
“It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child soldiers in the world.”
Those who want to perpetuate the military mindset — that is to say, the servants of the most powerful economic interests in the country — have to grab the minds of the young, because only in one’s youth does militarism resonate with uncontaminated glory. This is why the Army maintains a gamer website. And it’s why every branch of military service sets up shop in our most desperate schools and parades the Junior ROTC boys and girls before the public on Memorial Day, our national holiday in celebration of arrested development.
Robert Koehler, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an award-winning Chicago journalist and editor.
Building Trust In Afghanistan
Here in Kabul, I read a recent BBC op-ed by Ahmed Rashid, urging a “diplomatic offensive” to build or repair relationships with the varied groups representing armed extremism in Afghanistan. Rashid has insisted, for years, that severe mistrust makes it almost impossible for such groups to negotiate an end to Afghanistan’s nightmare of war.
Glancing upward at one of the six U.S. manufactured aerostat blimps performing constant surveillance over Kabul, I wonder if the expensively high-tech giant’s-eye view encourages a primitive notion that the best way to solve a problem here is to target a “bad guy” and then kill him. If the bad guys appear to be scurrying dots on the ground below, stomp them out.
Crushing only the right dots has proven very difficult for a U.S. drone warfare program documented to have killed many civilians. News sources speculate that the recent drone assassination of Taliban leader Akthar Mansour makes an end to this war far less likely. A commentator for the highly respected Afghan Analyst Network has written that “with the U.S. killing Akhtar Mansur, it is unlikely the Taleban will be set on anything but revenge for now, as can be understood from the movement’s political psychology… There is no reason to believe the fighting will de-escalate with the new leadership.”
Was that simple prediction available to the U.S.A.’s giant’s-eye view?
My young friends among the Afghan Peace Volunteers have shown me a vastly different approach toward problem solving. In a sense, they’ve been launching a diplomatic outreach, refining their approach through trial and error over the course of several years, taking careful steps toward building trust between different ethnic groups, and also relying on their own personal stories to help them understand the cares and concerns of others. Throughout their efforts they’ve tried to be guided by Gandhi’s advice about considering the poorest person’s needs before making a decision.
What has brought a non-violent future closer to Afghanistan – giant sized military and surveillance systems or the accomplishments of young volunteers working to develop inter-ethnic projects?
Twenty teams are working at the Borderfree Center organizing practical activities within communities coping with multiple economic woes, including food insecurity, unemployment, and inadequate income for meeting basic needs
Young people travel to and from the Center along unpaved roads lined on both sides with sewage filled drainage ditches. Traffic is chaotic, and the air is so polluted that many wear protective face masks. Day laborers congregate at intersections waiting in desperation for the opportunity to perform hard labor for $2 a day or less.
Even those fortunate enough to receive an education will likely face extreme difficulty in finding a job. Unemployment is at an all-time high of 40 percent and many jobs are attained only through ‘connections.’
Throughout Kabul, refugees crowd into squalid, sprawling camps where people live without adequate protection from harsh weather. According to The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between Jan. 1 and April 30 this year, “117,976 people fled their homes due to conflict.” And, the U.N. says it has only received 16 percent of funds needed for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan this year.
Nisar, one of the students at the Borderfree Center’s Street Kids School, understands destitution all too well. He has been earning an income for his family since he was a small child, working as a shoeshine boy on Kabul streets and also in a butcher shop. Now, at age 17, he will soon graduate from three years of classes with the Street Kids School. In the past year, he has been a steady volunteer, taking on responsibilities with the duvet project and the organic gardening team. Nisar says that when he first came to the Center, three years ago, he felt astonished to see people from different ethnic backgrounds sitting together. Nisar’s family comes from the Wardak province, and relatives of his are among those who recently fled the Taliban. He clearly understands the terrible risks that armed struggle could bring, even here in “Ka-bubble” as Kabul is sometimes called because of the relative calm that still prevails here. In spite of tensions, Nisar feels sure that when people learn to overcome their fears and start talking with one another, they can set aside hatreds taught to them at young ages.
U.S. planners, heads lost in the sky, seemingly pay little heed to developing ways of building trust. Resources are gobbled up by gigantic multinational “defense” companies dedicated to the task of further, trampling warfare, while withholding anything like the quantity of resources needed for the task of repairing the wreckage they themselves have caused.
U.S. think tanks cleverly promote cartoonized versions of foreign policy wherein the mighty giant strikes a fist and eliminates the “bad guy” whom we are told has caused our problems. But I believe U.S. people would be better off if we could see the often-suffering communities that show admirable qualities as they try to survive. We could learn from their efforts to build mutual trust and solidarity, and their courage to reject war. We could insist that the massively well endowed US and NATO powers finally acknowledge that the best hopes for a lasting peace come when communities experience a measure of stability and prosperity. The giant powers could help alleviate the desperate need faced by people enduring hunger, disease and homelessness.
U.S. people should earnestly ask how the U.S. could help build trust here in Afghanistan, and, as a first step, begin transferring funds from the coffers of weapon companies to the UN accounts trying to meet humanitarian needs. The “giant” could be seen stooping, humbly, to help plant seeds, hoping for a humane harvest.
Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) is distributed by PeaceVoice and co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She is writing from Kabul where she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.
AMAC Protests Invasion-of-Privacy Rule
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Obama’s “invasion of privacy rule” that would force children to share bathrooms in schools has sparked widespread protests across the nation.
“Dissent is rampant on this issue and the Association of Mature American Citizens wants to do something about it,” according to AMAC president Dan Weber. “Our 1.5 million members demand an end to such blatant abuse of power. The government wants to regulate every aspect of our personal lives including our biological need to use the toilet.”
Elementary schools, high schools and institutions of higher learning that receive federal funding are now required to allow boys and girls who seek transgender identities to use whichever toilet facilities they choose under the new federal decree.
“By directing the Department of Education to force schools to allow people of the opposite sex to use whatever bathroom, locker room or shower room they feel like using, President Obama has overstepped his authority and has assumed dictatorial powers. The President has absolutely no ability, according to the Constitution, to pass laws by himself,” Weber said. “But he continues to completely ignored Congress and the checks and balance that are part of our Constitution.”
AMAC is giving away wristbands with the single word, Privacy, on them to anyone who wishes to express their resistance to the government’s latest proclamation. “We want to protest the edicts and regulations issued by this administration that fundamentally change our way of life and take away our individual liberty. Whether the issue is illegal immigration, religious freedom, the I.R.S., or personal modesty.”
The new regulation will likely be tested in the courts. But commentator Larry O’Connor posted an article online that noted: “Regardless of how this gets worked out in the courts, every parent in America will wake up this morning having to deal with an issue they probably never thought they’d have to face several years ago. Parents now have to decide how they will deal with the reality that their child will not enjoy a basic level of privacy when they use a restroom or locker room when they go to school. Will this bring about a rise in private school attendance? Will it inspire more parents to home school their children? Will states flirt with the idea of refusing federal education funds? Either way, if anyone wondered what President Obama meant when he promised to ‘fundamentally transform the United States of America,’ now they know.”
AMAC president Weber said that the association’s wristband give-away is open to anyone who wishes to express “displeasure” at the administration’s action. To order a wristband go to https://amac.us/privacy/ or call 888-262-2006 and ask for “Wristband”
ABOUT AMAC
The Association of Mature American Citizens [http://www.amac.us] is a senior advocacy organization that takes its marching orders from its members.
Lost In Chicago…
Lost In Chicago With A Palestinian Holocaust Survivor
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2016/05/lost-in-chicago-with-palestinian.html
One would think that getting around Chicago by riding its elevated train system would be like a piece of cake. All you gotta do is pay your fare and then get from Point A to Point B. But one would not be counting on my highly-elevated ability to get lost. Anywhere. From Antarctica to Alaska, from the Melbourne to Mecca, from Walgreens to Walmart (except I never go to Walmart because they rip off the working class), I can still manage to get lost — and so Chicago’s “L” system proved to be no different from anyplace else.
But when I found out that Mariam Fathallahan, an 86-year-old survivor of the 1948 Palestinian holocaust, was speaking in Park Ridge, a suburb of Chicago, I decided to take a risk. This was a rare opportunity to hear her speak, so I jumped on the Green Line of the “L”. And jumped off again — onto the Red Line. “You need the Blue Line to get out to Park Ridge,” someone finally told me, “but not the Pink, Orange or Brown.” They got a pink line in Chicago? How cool is that!
So I got off that train and onto another train and then onto another train again. And ended up at O’Hare airport. But finally found the right station and then street-hiked east for a mile. So far so good. Only got lost three times. And when I got to the event, there was lots of free food! Hummus and falafels. Well worth the trip.
Over baklava, I got to talk with this refugee from the 1948 Palestine “Catastrophe” — and she was delightful. Jews don’t have a lock on delightful older holocaust refugees who have lived through Hell and survived, moving on to become wise people who are anti-war right down to the tips of their toes. http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/ Many Native American holocaust survivors are like that as well. And also survivors of Reagan’s 1980s ethnic cleansing of the Maya in Guatemala. But I digress.
As the evening wore on, it started raining cats and dogs outside and had gotten really really dark so I had to leave early so I could find my way back. But I heard later that the rest of the presentation went well. http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/palestinian-refugees-talk-about-living-without-a-state-at-columbia/article_19d69746-d60a-5208-9230-29cde5acdd00.html
Amena Ashkar, Fathallah’s translator and also a refugee who was born in the camps in Lebanon, had really interesting stuff to say. “When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, their main purpose was to get rid of Palestinian refugees,” and thus continue the Israeli neo-colonialist brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Having survived one holocaust already, Palestinians were then subject to yet another holocaust in Lebanon.
“Does Israel have a right to exist, you might ask me?” said Ashkar, “and my answer is this: Do I also have a right to exist as well?” Someone else added that it is definitely not cool to ask a rape victim if she recognizes the rights of her rapist. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/21/widening-cracks-zionism
So in the dark of night and pouring rain, I stumbled around the suburbs of Park Ridge, totally and hopelessly lost — until I finally saw a faint light in the distance. It was a Walgreens! “You walk a mile south then cross a bridge over the freeway and then walk a mile more,” said the friendly and helpful clerk. Great, just great. And then I also found out that parts of suburban Chicago have no sidewalks.
And somehow I finally made it back to the South Loop Hotel and took a hot bath. http://www.chicagosouthloophotel.com/
But how many Palestinian holocaust refugees today even have that option — to take a hot bath?
PS: One of the main reasons that I truly dislike the Clinton-Trump presidential ticket is because they both seem to be taking great glee at the thought of killing even more women and children in the Middle East; more than have already been maimed, slaughtered or made homeless by American-made bombs. Don’t all those millions of victims of the Bush-Obama-Clinton-Trump doctrine in the Middle East hate us enough already? http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/05/bernie-comes-to-vallejo/#more-62696
PPS: I’m not the only one that gets lost easily. America too has lost its way. Instead of heading toward the bright boulevards of Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and the Golden Rule, my country has completely lost its way inside a labyrinth of dark alleys that go nowhere — and have scary names like “Regime Change” and Genocide” and “Homelessness” and “Outsourcing”. https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/17/the-danger-of-demonization/
PPPS: News just in from my Syrian friend that yet another massive suicide bombing by ISIS/al Qaeda just took place in Syria. And the American neo-con RepubliDems are now jumping with joy. “Soon Syria will be another Libya!” they whisper behind their hands. And at the rate that Wall Street and War Street are supporting al Qaeda and ISIS, America will soon become another Libya too. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-wests-massacre-of-the-innocents-in-syria/5525865
“It’s really bad over there today,” writes my friend. “And the West’s pro-zombi media is celebrating their ‘victory’ on the ‘infidels’! But the pattern is so simple though: Whenever the Syrian Arab Army and their allies win against the ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists and armed gangs, then the terrorists target the civilians, not the army! They are blackmailing the Syrian government and army by targeting the people.
“I can imagine the Saudis, Turks, Qataris and whoever else is behind them [American and Israeli neo-colonialists!] saying to the Syrian officials in the negotiations: ‘If you won against our militias or if you are not going to surrender, we gonna order them to slaughter more civilians — and the Western media won’t even mention the Syrian dead (or our crimes)’.
“I wish that these criminals would not be allowed to get away with their crimes. And I also wish to witness their judgement day for the horrors they have inflicted on Syria.” Me too!
Real Health Care Needed
In the United States whatever health care program we accept and provide should cover Americans COMPLETELY, no co-pays, no out of pocket expenses, no hidden costs. Affordable Care Act, a.k.a., Obamacare, does not work for many Americans despite what is said about it.
Medicare is the closest program that works for most Americans who use it, but there are still additional costs and Medicare only pays 80 percent of all costs accepted by Medicare. The remaining 20 percent must be paid by the recipient. Yes, you could always get an additional Medicare Supplement that would pay the remaining 20 percent, but you still have to pay the premium for it.
Remember, those on Medicare still need to buy medication out of pocket or via a Medicare Rx Program.
The truth is that affordable health care is still NOT affordable.
Those who worked most of their lives have paid into the Medicare program. Those who are Medicare recipients continue to pay a small premium and deductible each year to remain on it, yet none are completely covered.
Although I don’t support him for President, like Bernie Sanders I believe a Medicare for All approach is the best option for Americans, although the health care industry would fight that to the death… our death.
We still need a real health care solution that works for most Americans. Medicare for All is the start of that solution.
Iconoclast Historical Writer Dies
By W. Leon Smith
Many readers of The Lone Star Iconoclast are mourning the recent passing of one of the publication’s former editorial contributors, Joe Marchman, 83, who died on March 2, 2016, at his residence after an extended illness. Burial was in Oak Grove Cemetery in Walnut Springs, Texas.
Marchman had an illustrious career and for The Iconoclast in his later years contributed intensely researched features about the founding of the Lone Star State. He was an award-winning writer, a reporter, an investigator, and an author. At one time he was involved in banking.
He was born on Sept. 25, 1932, in Meridian, Texas, the son of the late Herschel V. and Mary Ruth Rosenquist Marchman. He graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1957 and became the first city manager for the City of Plano, Texas, where he served as a developer and pioneer, creating the famed Western Heritage Sale with former Texas Gov. John Connally, Louis Pearce, Tio Kleburg, Bobby Shelton, and Bill Burford.
He was a collector of historical 19th century French and British art and was also a Santa Gertrudis rancher.
Marchman, who was intrigued about Texas history, wrote about E.T. “Bull” Adams, his wife, Mabel Wayland Adams of Glen Rose, and her father, Dr. James H. Wayland, a horse-and-buggy, High Plains pioneer of Plainview and West Texas.
Marchman’s “spotlight on history” series in The Iconoclast dealt with the lead-up of Gen. Sam Houston’s forces against Mexico’s Santa Anna at the Alamo, Goliad, and eventually San Jacinto, where Texas gained its independence from Mexico. Among the personalities featured were Erastus (Deaf) Smith who is credited with destroying Vince’s Bridge at San Jacinto, which provided no retreat for Santa Anna’s troops. Another key figure in the victory was The Yellow Rose of Texas, a young woman named Emily who was one of Santa Anna’s slaves. As Marchman put it, “It seems that Emily was closeted in the tent with General Santa Anna at the time the cry was made: ‘The Enemy! They Come! They Come!’ It is said that ‘Emily detained Santa Anna so long that order could not be restored.
“Coming out of his tent, Santa Anna saw his men falling around him. He grabbed a bright blue jumper and slithered away through the tall grass in an effort to escape the vengeance of the raunchy ravenous Texans.
“Given a horse, Santa Anna galloped away toward Vince’s Bayou. As he reached the bayou, his large black horse bogged down in the marsh. His efforts to reach General Filisola at the Brazos was not to be. The Napoleon of the West was forced to crawl on his belly through the tall, wet grass to his Waterloo the rest of the night.”
Marchman went on to write, based on extensive research, that Emily “lived to tell her story to her tent mate. The story Emily told inspired the never-to-be-forgotten ballad known as ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’”
Marchman’s detailed recreations of Texas Independence were well read and highly touted.
Marchman, who was a member of the Cowboy Church in Stephenville, is survived by his children, Houston Marchman of Spicewood, Molly Marchman of Bryan, and Joe Marchman, Jr. of Las Vegas, Nev.; and several grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Jim Marchman.
Sustainable Social Justice – Changing Our World
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
~ Sun Tzu
For over a century war has been made on us, not with weapons of military might, but economic war intended to utterly control us and steal everything we have. Not knowing, we were manipulated, divided, and began to fight each other.
Individuals hiding behind corporate shields are responsible for this, for the mortgage crisis, for the deaths of Veterans left homeless after serving their country. It will not end until those responsible are held accountable.
Our actions must solve many problems simultaneously. We have in our hands the power to hasten our removal from dependence on oil and ensure justice is done for the many who have suffered and been victimized.
The road to peace, community, prosperity, and freedom is sustainability. We must extract ourselves from the grid of greed and rebuild our world. Beginning with Social Justice projects we can build locally to demonstrate to our fellow Americans why this works for them, personally.
At one time we will show our neighbors, friends, and associates the benefits of sustainability and the difference we can make in the lives of those abandoned to the streets.
The fact is, most people decide what to do based on what they are facing personally. By showing them how they can reduce their cost of living while living better we will have motivated them to adopt sustainable technologies. But they have to see and experience it themselves.
We can no longer afford to ignore those in need. Sustainable housing and effective treatment for PTSD is the best and least expensive way to put these victims of corporate greed back on their feet.
Utah decided in 2005 it was cheaper to provide housing than to pay the expenses caused by their homeless population. Today, they home first. Then they provide services to help the homeless put their lives back together. Other states and municipalities are following their example. But we can do better. Conventional buildings fail to take people off the grid, demonstrating the benefits of sustainable construction. All of us need to get off this grid.
Sustainability lowers recurring costs. It gives us back time we are now spending making money just to pay those looming monthly expenses. For too long sustainability has been geared for those ‘who can afford it.’ This misperception must be corrected.
The most expensive part of a building is the material used for construction. Netzero material which is hydrophobic, fire-proof, resistant to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and more is waiting to be used in America, as it is now used in other parts of the world.
Visit the Geopolymer Institute, founded in 1979. The material used, various kinds of clay, such as kaolinite, have been used in Oriental medicine for thousands of years. New processing breakthroughs using nanotechnology techniques have made the resulting material harder and even longer lasting.
“Oh, but it is expensive,” you think. Wrong. It is far cheaper than the faux green materials presently in use and includes no petroleum products whatsoever.
The same formula we will be using is also suitable for repairing the bridges, highways, dams, and other infrastructure now deteriorating across America. We need to ensure it becomes the new standard for construction.
First, we home. Then, we heal.
At the same time local organizing for Veterans will begin, using treatments which really work to extinguish the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Today these treatments, different forms of Neurofeedback, are being used to treat drug and alcohol addiction as well. Addictions, as it turned out, are very often self medication used to cope with chronic anxiety.
Dr. Janet McCulloch, a psychiatrist practicing in Kingston, Canada began using Neurofeedback to treat Veterans and became persuaded of its practicality and thrift. She says, “…with neurofeedback we can help more people more quickly and with less expense. That makes sense to me.”
Starting with a sustainable project for homeless Vets we will show Americans a very different future. Along with the Vets being homed and healed they will find solutions to their most pressing problems.
These are powerful messages, changing what those in our own communities think is possible Hope can be reawakened in people who have given up as our actions will convey this powerful message, aiding all of us to heal.
As they recover, Vets will learn new skills opening doors to jobs and enterprises in Green Commerce.
Every person who recovers is another man or woman who will have made a transition into the future we want for all of us.
How do we get the funding, you may wonder. We demand taxpayers be allowed to direct their tax contribution to a local trust, started and run by the taxpayers, to provide a Veterans Village for their town. Would you contribute the taxes you have already paid? In a NY minute.
Iconoclast Loses Two More To Death
The Lone Star Iconoclast in 2016 has lost two more of its major writers and editorial contributors to death, which follows the untimely passing of Eric May on Oct. 14, 2014.
On March 2, historical writer Joe Marchman passed away and April 11 saw the passing of human rights activist and filmmaker Aldo Vidali.
All three men were impressive in their writing abilities that went far beyond merely putting words on paper. They each had a distinct courageous side. They didn’t mind tackling tough subjects and standing up to the powers that be in their questioning. None of the three took pay for their writing of essays because they believed in the “causes” they were championing more than financial rewards. They felt compelled to get the word out and often utilized The Iconoclast to do so, with a definite mark of perseverance and dedication.
Eric May, the founder of Ghost Troop, was a former Army intelligence officer who possessed a keen ability to read “between the lines” posts, predict false flags, and dissect dispatches and trends from a military perspective. Much of what he wrote required putting his own life in danger.
In the case of Joe Marchman, his contributions to The Iconoclast were mainly about Texas history, the winning of Texas independence from Mexico. He spent thousands of hours conducting research and compiling historical accounts that were both entertaining and historically correct. He also served as an investigator and a reporter where, like Captain May, he stood up to powerful people and at times put it all on the line.
Aldo Vidali, to me, was the ultimate adventurer. He was skilled at filmmaking and writing and created some of the most compelling prose I have ever read. What struck me was his passion for human rights, himself nearly having been one of Hitler’s victims in World War II as a young boy. There were many issues in which he and I agreed, one being the sanctity of the Constitution and another the demolition of the neo-con influence as it continues its quest to take over of the United States.
Writers like these helped define the hard line taken by The Iconoclast to provide ideas that do not necessarily and most often do not sink to the corporate idiocies frequently delivered by the mainstream media. These men were visionaries who constantly thought outside the box, pulling away from the “trees” to examine truth from a distant perspective and then returning again to fashion drops of ink into innovative and challenging works of genius.
Iconoclast Readers Mourn Loss Of Aldo Vidali
Aldo Vidali, one of The Iconoclast’s main editorial contributors, passed away April 11, 2016, due to heart failure and complications from a recent hip replacement surgery. He was born on Feb. 12, 1930, in Bruxelles.
According to Vidali’s wife, Viktoria, his passing “was quick and without prolonged pain, the way he hoped his death might be.” She was with him at the physical therapy center where he had been transferred after the operation when the first symptoms occurred. She was by his side in the emergency room later that day when he took his final breath. He told her before dying, “I have had love in my life, the only thing that truly matters.”
An adventurer, Vidali spent much of his life championing human rights, which was evident in his numerous writings for The Iconoclast. The newspaper published his biography in a July 5, 2006 edition that focused on a film he was directing called “Deflating The Elephant.” Below are parts of the feature he penned along with his biography that was published at that time.
Vidali is survived by Viktoria and two sons, Orlando and Lorenzo.
Bio: Aldo Vidali, Published July 5, 2006
Production is under way on Deflating the Elephant, a film based on George Lakoff’s bestseller “Don’t Think Of An Elephant.”
Producing the film is Aldo Vidali, an Italian documentary film director who lives in Northern California and teaches at the Fellini-Antonioni Acting Studio.
Vidali, an outspoken champion of individual rights, embarked on the film to illustrate how conservatives are using frames to negatively sway public opinion and to encourage the public to make a stand against tyranny while the opportunity remains.
The film is styled in the tradition of famed Italian director, the late Federico Fellini, with whom Vidali collaborated on films years ago.
Born in Ixelles, Belgium, Vidali was educated in Rome, Italy.
He and his family joined the Resistance Movement against fascist and Nazi forces during World War II.
When he was only 13 years old, he was captured by the Nazis during the Fosse Ardeatine Nazi dragnet in Rome, but was released shortly thereafter because of his age. At the time, his family members were sheltering several Jewish refugees in their apartment to prevent their deportation to death camps in Germany.
At age 18, Vidali explored the tropical wilderness of the Brazilian interior selling Coleman lamps and stoves to primative villages as a way to earn college tuition.
He came to the United States to study geology at the Colorado School of Mines in 1950 and later prospected in the Mexican states of Sonora and Durango.
After selling his interest in his Mexican mineral discoveries, he returned to Europe to do documentary film work. It was here that he collaborated with director Fellini on a project entitled The Stange Voyage of Mr. Mastorna and learned directing and cinema acting during the Fellini creations of 8-1/2 and Boccaccio 70. He had a brief professional relationship with Luchino Visconti.
Vidali also dealt with government and entertainment industry VIPs such as President Johnson, Jack Valenti, John Mecum, and Peter Sellers.
His documentary works originated a new genre, superimposing fiction on real-life documentary backgrounds.
Straw Hat and the Crown, shown on the Italian R.A.I. Television Network, received recognition even from the Vatican for its subtle moral theme set off by contrasting a fairy tale on a background of real life events.
In 1963, Vidali went to Africa as Second Unit Director of the feature documentary Good-bye Africa, a Rizzoli Production. He covered South Africa, Southwest Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Zanzibar, Congo, and Angola.
This exposed him to a wide range of human beings, both as a film director as well as the liaison officer between the South African government and the Italian film unit.
Back in the U.S. in 1965, Aldo wrote and directed Sunset at Dawn, a predictive environmental film essay on the worsening ecological crisis, followed by Trail to the Stars, a film view of the NASA space program contrasted with America’s pioneering past. These were followed by a series of minor commercial works.
In 1970, he began construction of a 57 ft. sailing ketch in Malibu, California. Simultaneously, he opened a New Age café supporting the flower children revolution in the Topanga hills. The café operated during the years of Aldo’s boat building.
In 1978, Vidali participated in the environmental-political campaign in Kauai, Hawaii, to save the island’s pristine shorelines at Nukoli’i from yet another tourist development.
In 1980, after years of boat building, the Arcana was launched. Sea trials began around California’s Channel Islands. Outfitting and shakedown cruises went on to prepare for a major bluewater voyage in the Eastern Pacific.
In 1984, Aldo, his wife, Viktoria, and their two-year old son Orlando set sail for the Eastern Pacific. They explored the West Coast of Mexico, Baja California, Sea of Cortez, Marquesas Islands, Tuamotus Archipelago, Society Islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, Bora-Bora, the Hawaiian chain, British Columbia, and the Northwest Coast of the Americas. Their voyage covered approximately 40,000 nautical miles.
This adventurous chapter of their lives includes the wild experience of Hurricane Ima, when the Arcana rushed to find refuge in Moorea’s Cook’s Bay in the Society Islands. Later, in a final adventure of their four-year voyage, Aldo, Viktoria, and Orlando survived an attack on the high seas by a North Korean fishing ve ssel by cat and mouse out-maneuver. The Vidalis left Puget Sound immediately after the birth of their second son, Lorenzo.
So, in 1987, the Arcana sailed down the West Coast and landed in San Diego, California. The Vidali family, while happily raising their sons, worked to preserve the remaining natural resources of the Golden State.
A champion of the environment, Vidali later challenged Republican Interior Secretary James Watt, when Watt opened vast sections of Federal lands to exploitation. Vidali developed a plan to preserve the wilderness by rushing to the Denali region of Alaska, forming the Alaska Capital Corporation (ALCOR), and leasing thousands of acres of federal oil lands.
Explained Vidali, “The Watt Administration had assumed that small entrepreneurs could not afford to drill in the Arctic, thus leaving the course clear for major players. ALCOR deliberately proceeded to subdivide the leases into impractical 40-acre parcels, which would oblige major oil companies to buy out each and every one from far too many owners before they could move in and drill. One single holdout lease could stall exploration for years.”
Vidali hired and trained agents to successfully distribute tiny oil lease parcels across the nation. This maneuver caught the oil industry by surprise, and by the time they pressed the government to impose a minimum parcel size of 2,500 acres, it was too late. Big Oil tried to make the law retroactive. Vidali blocked that illegal attempt by notifying all leaseholders to demand their rights against this undemocratic scheme of Big Oil. This tactic was successful, and thus prevented major exploitation of the Denali for 10 years.
Vidali returned to the mainland in late 2000 where his family created a film with students under the UNECO label entitled Life & Liberty in the Balance, protesting the court-appointed Bush administration.
Vidali is currently in pre-production of a full feature documentary: Toward a Global Open Society, a dialogue between great contemporary minds and the American people. This film addresses the urgent need of all citizens to participate directly in dialogue and action to restore their Constitutional Republic.
Reviving the motion picture work developed under Fellini’s guidance, Vidali is now teaching and preparing productions dedicated to promoting the restoration of American Democracy, defense of the Bill of Rights, and openly denouncing the neo-fascist “Patriot” Act and the neocon imperialistic scheme against America.
Vidali currently lives with his wife and two sons on California’s Central Coast. He volunteers as Chairman of UNECO, a nonprofit environmental and humanitarian corporation, and is active in the United Defenders of Liberty Movement.
He speaks English, Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and is a public lecturer on social, educational, and environmental subjects.
Excerpts From His Feature On “Deflating The Elephant”
Few clearly perceive how dangerous the world situation is becoming.
Inhuman money controls mass media and deliberately broadcasts as many frivolous distractions as possible to keep people from noticing the fascist beast closing in on millions of unsuspecting victims.
Current diabolical schemers make Hitler and Stalin look like dilettantes.
Their skills at diverting attention by frequently sounding terror-lurking-under-every-bush alarms have been honed to perfection. A movie can expose them with scandalous evidence.
As a boy, I experienced arrogant Italian Fascism and the evil of rightwing fanatical religionism.
In December 2000, when America was flagrantly betrayed by five black-robed hypocrites, shivers of horror went down my spine. Our grassroots organization immediately net-published a large front-page headline: “DAY OF INFAMY – Fascist Coup in the United States!” which was printed over a photo of marching Nazi SS troopers.
Friends objected that to use the word “fascist” was an exaggeration.
Now, six years later, most are as outraged as we were then and have been ever since.
In 2004, a second national election was stolen by the same fascist cabal and American democracy de facto ceased to exist, except in the deluded minds of sleeping TV network audiences.
That year, University of California Berkeley Professor George Lakoff ’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, appeared and was an instant bestseller.
What it revealed is how linguistic frames influence social conditions.
Reading Don’t Think of an Elephant was a stunning clarification for me of how evil ideas throughout history are framed to allow “the few” to control and oppress “the many.” Indeed, ideas projected through invisible linguistic frames can transform the mind.
Lakoff ’s scientific explanations brought back memories of working with Federico Fellini and learning from him how cinematic images change society.
For example, after Fellini’s Casanova and City of Women, I had watched downcast Italian males leaving theaters, stunned. Exaggerated Italian machismo was crushed by these great films and never fully recovered.
Fellini’s demolition of century- old prejudices and Lakoff ’s linguistic art of framing suggested to me a potential cinematic cure for America.
It was my good fortune to share Federico’s thoughts about dreams and metaphysical questions while he was conceiving his mysterious story, The Voyage of G. Mastorna. This work contains some of his visions and speculations about the human state in this world and after death.
During that unforgettable experience, Fellini explained how cinematic images liberate, dissolve fear, and open our lives to perceiving the subtlest aspects of the world. That “sceneggiatura”— The Voyage of G. Mastorna — is now known as the most famous never filmed-screenplay in the history of cinema.
Fellini’s insight on the magic of light gives us a glimpse of the profundity of his art.
He said:
What is light? If cinema is images, light is its evident essence. In cinema, light is idea, sentiment, color, profundity, atmosphere, style, narrative, poetic expression. Light is the magic power that adds, cancels, softens, suggests, exalts, alludes, underscores, and renders the fantastic credible and acceptable, or, on the contrary, creates
transparencies through which the gray daily reality becomes rich, fairytale like. With a single reflector and a pair of lights an opaque face, with as much expressiveness as a bare knee, appears intelligent, mysterious, fascinating; an open, benevolent, peaceful face becomes sinister, menacing, frightening.
The poorest scene — squalid, shabby — can with light reveal enchanting or ominous aspects…barely moving a 5000-watt light and lighting up an opposite light, all the feelings of anguish vanishes and everything is serene, comfortable, homey. Finally, film is written with light; the style of an authentic filmmaker is expressed with light.
THE MOVIE
Uneco Productions’ Deflating The Elephant owes much to The Strange Voyage of G. Mastorna. Like Mastorna, it is a voyage into past and future … in this world and in an imaginary world where humanity is at last cured and grown to maturity and sanity … a satirical, historic, amusing, and symbolic movie.
Like Moby Dick, Deflating the Elephant is about hunting large beasts that incarnate evil. It will bring down the rogue pachyderms that are devastating our world (just as Twentieth Century fascists and Bolsheviks devastated theirs) by unmasking the secret class war the rich are waging against the American people.
The hunting weapon this film delivers to the people is a Fellinesque-Lakoffian bow with arrows that can pierce soft, bloated underbellies of the fascist beasts and deflate them of their foul, hot air.
George Lakoff exposed the fact that conservatives spent 40 years and billions of dollars to grow, feed, and empower these land-roving Moby Dicks. False conservative frames have just about destroyed our 230 years of progress toward a vision of democratic culture and equality before the law and have nearly extinguished the American dream.
It is especially important and urgent that millions of Americans clearly understand why sharply framed and well-aimed progressive ideas can instantly bring down the ugly beasts.
The speed of change possible through strategic use of visual frames must be understood by all those liberals who wring their hands and worry that the deceitful conservative frames erected over four decades by lavishly funded, right-wing think-tanks may take just as many years to demolish before our Constitution can be restored and “We The People” take our country back. This is not so! If we had to wait 40 years, there’d be no country left to take back and no environment to restore.
HOW THEY STOLE OUR COMMONWEALTH
Exposing how we have been robbed is sobering. Conservatives used many deceiving frames to steal from us. We’ll tackle here just a few of the metaphors they employed to deform one of democracy’s most fundamental pillars: justice.
Mixing Fellini’s cinematic secrets with Lakoff ’s scientific brilliance is like mixing nitro and glycerine — which makes up dynamite. Liars and thieves are in for a big surprise.
The neo-crooks have been fanning the flames of a still unexplained 9/11 tragedy into a fabulously profitable perennial frame: “war-on-terror.”
What should have been an international police hunt by civilized nations has turned into a deadly, trillion-dollar con job.
In reality, there is no war. The phony “war” frame provides a legalistic and pseudo-moral justification for flag waving, criminal wars of aggression, and the dismantling of our Constitution.
The 9/11 Commission colluded with Bush and Cheney so that the inseparable twins were conveniently questioned together – to avoid contradictions — behind closed doors, and not under oath for fear of future indictments for obstructing justice.
The questioners were all tail-wagging administration’s lap dogs.
Lights and cameras will capture the criminal activities of the national security organizations that colonize the world with prisons, torture chambers, and concentration camps. The horrors of so-called rendition (criminal
kidnapping with torture outsourcing) and the deployment of massive domestic electronic spying networks that outrageously violate the Constitutional rights of American citizens and intrude even on their attorney-client privilege will be exposed.
What was once a country of laws is now a country run by a self-declared fundamentalist despot claiming the privilege to violate any law he chooses.
From: “The Most Evil People in the World,” by Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.
In his book: Gangs of America [download a copy at http://www.gangsofamerica.com], Ted Nace reveals the preposterous way the U.S. was taken over by big business.
Historically, it was the battle between democracy and corporations that started the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party was an action to block the British East India Company, the most powerful corporation that ever existed, from monopolizing the American commodities markets, starting with tea. The American Revolution was a pragmatic economic rebellion against an overbearing corporation and an oppressive government thoroughly intertwined with it.
The East India Company had planned to replace independent local merchants with a company-owned distribution system, i.e., an early version of what we now call “vertical integration,” like, for example, oil companies owning wells, refineries, and gas stations.
Boston pamphleteers — we had a free press then — laid out the scenario in detail, warning that if the British were to succeed in bringing the tea distribution system under sole control of the East India Company, they would inevitably repeat the same scheme for other imported commodities.
Sound familiar? Think of the WTO.
The East India Company, if once they get Footing in this (once) happy country, will leave no Stone unturned to become your Masters. They are an opulent Body, and Money or Credit is not wanting amongst them. They have a designing, depraved, and despotic Ministry to assist and support them. They themselves are well versed In TYRANNY, PLUNDER, OPPRESSION and BLOODSHED. Whole Provinces labouring under the Distresses of Oppression, Slavery, Famine, and the Sword, are familiar to them. Thus they have enriched themselves, thus they are become the most powerful Trading Company in the Universe.
Excerpt from a broadside signed “A Mechanic,” Philadelphia, December 4, 1773.
Imagine a private company so unaccountable that it conducts its own criminal trials and runs its own jails; so dominant it possesses a 250,000 man army, twice the size of Britain’s, to fight company wars; and so predatory that for more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled white.” A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes 10% of the government’s revenues. Even the King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company!
When the cargo ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, approximately 150
men assembled at the home of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal’s founder. They came from many backgrounds: some were apprentices, some tradesmen, some wealthy owners of businesses. By dawn, the entire shipment of tea had been destroyed. The American Revolution would soon be under way.
One glaring example in a long record of uncontrolled corporate evil was unleashed against this country in 1936:
[C]onsider this unpunished crime, committed by the leadership of General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, B. F. Phillips Petroleum, and Mac Manufacturing.
In 1936, the five companies formed National City Lines, a holding company that proceeded to buy electric trolley lines and tear up the tracks in cities across the nation.
Each time it destroyed a local trolley system, National City would license the rights to operate a new system to a local franchisee, under the stipulation that the system convert to diesel powered General Motors buses.
By 1949, more than 100 electric transit systems in 45 systems had been torn up and converted. In April of that year, a federal jury convicted GM and the other firms of conspiracy to commit anti-trust violations. But the judge set the fine for each company at $5,000. Seven executives were fined one dollar each. After the conviction,
the companies went back to purchasing transit systems, removing electric trolley lines, and replacing them with buses. Gangs of America, Introductionp. 7.
As Atlanta mayor and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young once observed, “Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.”
In 1882-83, Judge Stephen Field’s Ninth Circuit Court, with twisted judicial sophistry, established the personhood of corporations in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. This self-evident absurdity has proven to be a menace to democracy and humanity.
Judge Field’s tortuous legalese behind the creation of immortal, frankensteinian corporations coincided with the
view of Professor John Norton Pomeroy, namely: “The truth cannot be evaded that, for the purpose of protecting rights, the property of all business and trading corporations IS the property of the individual corporators.
A state act depriving a business corporation of its property without due process of law, does in fact deprive the individual corporators of their property.
In this sense, and within the scope of these grand safeguards of private rights, there is no real distinction between artificial persons or corporations, and natural persons.”
Ted Nace explains why an understanding of this is critical:
As simple as this false argument sounds, it was a significant departure from established legal doctrine, which had always made a distinction between corporate property and individual property. The most crucial distinction is that owning shares in a company allows a person to own property without being subject to the sort of accountability to the community that normally attends the ownership of property [emphasis
added]. For that reason, courts had never assumed that shareholders in a corporation should expect equal rights; on the contrary, the enjoyment by corporate shareholders of privileges such as limited liability justified applying special restrictions to corporations and their owners. Gangs of America, p. 118.
It is self-evident that giving legal personhood to a corporation, while enjoying all other rights, also creates the right to do wrong and escape responsibility.
In the 2006 California primaries, the residents of Humboldt County said enough is enough and successfully challenged corporate personhood.
THE NEAR FUTURE IN LIGHT OF HISTORY
America won its greatest victory against Italian fascists, German Nazis, and Japanese imperialists while fighting for democracy under the leadership of liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After WWII, humanity renewed its hope in the flowering of a great civilization founded on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a world in which nuclear holocausts like Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never again happen; where war, death-camps, fascist oppression, and gulags, would forever be mere memories of past insanity;
where international law would settle disputes and people everywhere would become self-governing; where victorious nations would cease selling instruments of death and instead spread the profitable tools of healthcare, economic prosperity, and environmental conservation.
However, the realization of this hope, this beautiful dream, never did come to pass. Bloodshed and destruction quickly resumed and continue to this day: Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, Africa, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia, and Iraq.
So, who are the Oids!? They are that recurring percentage of psychotics throughout history that makes peace and justice impossible. It is imperative that Oids be exposed if we are to cure humanity and create a progressive world.
By way of explanation, adding “oid” to any word alters its meaning to: “made in the form of ” or “pretending to be.” For example, when “oid” is affixed to the word “sphere,” it becomes the word “spheroid,” which means “made in the form of a sphere” (not a real sphere).
“Oid” is, therefore, a label for “hypocrites” and for all those who pretend to be something they are not.
A Christianoid can then be defined as “a pseudo-Christian” or anyone pretending to be a follower of Jesus while at the same time supporting war, torture, and the death penalty.”
Let’s be creative here.
A patrioid is a flag-waving idiot who forgot that the flag represents the Union established by the U.S. Constitution.
“Monkeys can wave flags, but that does not make them patriots!” noted Scott Ritter (who is a real patriot).
All evildoers can be lumped under a single label: “humanoids” — that is, beasts made in the shape of humans.
EMOTIONAL HONESTY vs. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Recently Senator Murtha – who is to be highly commended for is outspokenness against the war — protested criminal military actions in Iraq. While he deserves praise for this, it is evident that Senator Murtha is unfortunately still a victim of political correctness.
After the Haditha massacre committed by U.S. troops, he said: “One woman, as I understand it in talking to the officials in the Marine Corps, was bending over her child, pleading for mercy, and they shot her in cold blood. That’s the thing that’s so disturbing.”
What an astounding hyper-understatement!
As much as Senator Murtha must be admired for his courage, in following the Washington-accepted PC communications style imposed by the conservative culture of hypocrisy, he failed to galvanize public condemnation.
How can murder in cold blood be referred to as simply “disturbing”— is such a satanic crime not outrageous beyond belief? Diabolical? Insane? Nauseating? Evil? Does it not call for Divine vengeance?
To bring it home, just imagine yourself finding your own family slaughtered in cold blood and hearing someone politely saying: “I am troubled” or “I’m disturbed.”
Emotionally honest people express their pain and anger openly and directly.
One trick satanic corpo-media use is to make justified outrage and righteous indignation look like hysteria. Any sincere expression of shock and revulsion in the face of a crime is treated as excess so insistently by criminal media whores, that all truth is neutralized and soon forgotten.
This is how the odious mediaoids subliminally train decent people to restrain sincere dismay, disgust, and rage to grotesque levels of apparent indifference to the suffering of others.
We are told by inhuman monsters never to “lose our cool,” never to let anger roar to the level of rage in our voices, never to dare call killers murderers, especially if they are a part of our own despicable government.
Whack-A-Mole…New Voter Revolt
Whack-a-Mole: Old School Politicians vs. The New Voter Revolt
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2016/06/whack-mole-old-school-politicians-vs.html
First we Americans got stuck with McCarthyism, wherein out-of-line voters had their lives completely destroyed if they even thought about speaking up. American voters were shamelessly intimidated. The RepubliDems were large and in charge.
Then came Chicago back in 1968 — when rioting police basically beat all out-of-line voters to a pulp.
However, the RepubliDem old-school political machine did learn to become a bit more subtle after that — but not by much. Ronald Reagan, their next fair-haired boy, was called the “Teflon” president because no matter what kind of crap he pulled, he always got away with it. Why? Because Wall Street and War Street and the mainstream media always had his back. And their propaganda machine, instead of the cops, now beat out-of-line voters to a pulp. And that seemed to work even better.
Reagan would do stuff that looked and smelled like dog dookie, but a fawning press would rush to assure us voters that the crap we were being forced to swallow was actually candy and cake. And even to this day, Americans are convinced that Reagan is a god — not the devil incarnate that he actually was.
And most Americans wanted Gore or even Nader for president in 2000. But we got Bush-Cheney shoved down our throats instead. Of course there were a few whimpers here and there back then (I myself whimpered a lot) but the Republican high command told us that this new line of bull-crap was all for our own good. And the Democratic high command bobbled their heads in agreement.
And then the MSM told us that 9-11 and the “war” on Afghanistan and the “war” on Iraq weren’t Bush’s fault. And of course, most Americans still believed the MSM.
Then along came Obama, ready to play ball. “No more war,” he told us, fingers crossed behind his back. And we believed him too — because, in America, words speak louder than deeds. http://mycatbirdseat.com/2016/06/94852-democrats-are-now-the-aggressive-war-party/
But what about the 2016 election? American voters are finally starting to wise up. “All that glitters is not gold,” they are finally noticing at last. The next generation of American voters is no longer drinking the Kool-Aid. And so the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee are now being forced to join hands and start playing “Whack-a-Mole” — attempting to suppress voter revolts as they spring up, again and again, first in one place and then in another.
Trump wins the nomination on an anti-war platform that includes making peace with Russia and letting Syria work its own problems out? “How can we take it away from him?” screams the RNC. “What war-mongering party hack can we put in his place?”
Sanders, that peace-loving man of the people, is about to win the nomination? “How can we stop him from that?” squawks the DNC. No problem. Just ask the voters in Arizona, California and New York how the DNC did it. They just cheated, lied, committed election fraud and cut Bernie entirely out of media access. Voila!
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37325-stealing-california
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/06/where-are-the-missing-california-primary-votes/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/arizona_secretary_of_state_confirms_fraud_during_primary_vote_20160401
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/06/nyc-board-of-elections-suspends-2nd-official-delays-hillary-clinton-v-bernie-sanders-results-certification/
https://johnlaurits.com/2016/06/09/take-heart-berner/
And now Whack-a-Mole has been activated yet again and Clinton is shoved down our throats too. But here is the real question — just exactly how much longer can the RNC and the DNC keep playing Whack-a-Mole before American voters really really revolt?
PS: Here’s a comment from my son, posted on social media the night that the MSM, Wall Street and War Street whacked us California voter-moles over the head in order to give Clinton her big win:
“If Hillary is going to get even a fraction towards what this world needs in a leader, she’s going to have to pull out some sh*t that she really hasn’t shown yet, because all I’ve seen so far is glad-handing, false face, pandering (oh damn girl, what’s that in your bag, is that f*cking HOT SAUCE? OMG, sold!), selling out, unyielding war-mongering, reinforcing a RACIST SYSTEM and BUILDING ON IT. She has shown me nothing that makes me feel like politics are mine. Or my generation’s. Or my children’s generation. It’s f*cking bad-ass that she’s a woman. But she is the wrong woman.”
I’m with him!
PPS: Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, just schooled us Americans with this obvious home-truth: “The two major parties want to offer voters a choice of the two most disliked politicians in America. Lesser evil gets worse every election.” https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/740936884004761601?s=02
If we want a woman in the White House, then why not one who will actually be a good role model for our daughters — such as Dr. Stein or Elizabeth Warren? Instead of one who gloats about killing Libya and keeps illegal e-mails in her basement so she can avoid getting caught? And we all know that Bill will run the White House anyway.
I’d rather have Sanders — or even Trump — in the White House than that.
Actively Support Jill Stein For President
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Bring America Together
Few Americans would have voted for Barack Obama four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would continue to sustain the failed missions of former President George W. Bush, perpetuate endless unnecessary wars, and exhibit ineptitude in dealing with crises at home. Obama promised change and did not deliver.
Under Obama, we have seen, for instance: racial division at an all-time high, the United States nine trillion dollars more in debt, education policies that failed to curb college costs, disastrous vetting policies of Muslim immigrants, war waged with Libya without congressional approval, aiding in the birth of ISIS, NSA spying on American citizens, Benghazi, disappearing tax money, Obamacare, poorly staffed agencies with legislative directives to be nonproductive, zero immigration reform, and the list goes on…..
He is now ready to pass the presidential baton to his former Secretary of State so that Hillary Clinton can become yet another “dynasty” president, much like the disastrous Bushes, and continue with the Clintons’ growth of personal wealth and power, the hell with middle class America.
A distinguished and highly respected Texas journalist, Molly Ivins, explained in one of her last columns that Hillary Clinton’s vote for the Iraq War “disqualified” her f
rom being president, a chant that reverberates even stronger when considering the Benghazi episode and e-mails that put our soldiers at risk. Her neo-liberal policy positions have been exploited to increase the wealth of the Clinton Foundation, plus her support of NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement make her a most disagreeable presidential nominee.
And, if elected, we not only get Hillary, but Bill, too, a confirmed compulsive liar who signed the death warrant of the Delaney Amendment that allowed big companies to freely incorporate cancer-causing agents into our foodstuffs, companies that became big donors to the Clintons. The Bushes had their Halliburtons and the Clintons have their Monsantos. Why would any sane political party offer us a highly dysfunctional family to run our country when there are and were other choices?
Or you could vote for Trump, the gambling casino mouthpiece who due to inheritance is a billionaire, someone who does not know what it’s like to have to struggle to survive. He’s not self-made and, moreover, he hasn’t released his most recent tax returns. We don’t know if his wealth has grown or shrunk. So how do we know he will help grow the economy and create jobs?
Also, regarding his immigration policy, which side of the Rio Grande does he plan to have the Mexican government build the border wall? If it’s the American side, we’ll lose access to the Rio Grande. If it’s on the Mexican side, the Mexicans would basically own the wall. So maybe no wall is better than a wall, and no Trump is better than a Trump.
Today, the leaders in the Republican and Democratic Parties have demonstrated that not only in the United States, but globally, they cannot be trusted. They are the left and right hands of the same mafia-type operation. That’s why each party has witnessed extreme dissent this election year. The Trump camp has pulled away from the Republican base and cannot obtain endorsements from the party core. Bernie Sanders acted similarly in the Democratic Party, only he came up vote-short due to gross shenanigans perpetrated by Hillary Clinton in the DNC camp to steal the nomination.
Focus has been turned upon these squabbles and power plays when it should instead be turned upon other choices — third-party candidates who by design have been virtually eliminated for consideration due to demands by the Democrats and Republicans to maintain a two-party system. This translates to voters being led to choose one of the two mistrustful “lesser of evils.”
Today, The Lone Star Iconoclast is endorsing Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president because of her believable vision to return our country to normality. It is time to distance ourselves from the lies, deceit, bigotry, and scandals that prevail in the two major parties. It would be a clean re-start with plain, intelligent, progressive, everyday folks, not the billionaire elite who are consumed by personal greed.
Dr. Jill Stein, a Harvard-trained physician, favors single-payer health care, campaign finance reforms, and student loan debt forgiveness. Like Bernie Sanders, she has refused to accept money from corporate donors.
There is much work to be done in our communities, from infrastructure to affordable education. We need to elect someone like Jill Stein who has both the desire and the ability to make things happen and knows how to do it. Her training in medicine has given her the ability to analyze minute details and step-by-step answers. She had the intelligence to become a doctor. Can you say this about Donald and Hillary?
Stein wants to have the power given back to the electorate, the people, and has a plan to create a “deep system change, moving from the greed and exploitation of corporate capitalism to a human-centered economy that puts people, planet, and peace over profit.”
On her website, she addresses topics that hit home:
Education as a Right: Abolish student debt to free a generation of Americans from debt servitude. Guarantee tuition-free, world-class public education from pre-school through university. End high stakes testing and public school privatization.
A Green New Deal: Create millions of jobs by transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture, and conservation.
Jobs as a Right: Create living-wage jobs for every American who needs work, replacing unemployment offices with employment offices. Advance workers rights to form unions, achieve workplace democracy, and keep a fair share of the wealth they create.
End Poverty: Guarantee economic human rights, including access to food, water, housing, and utilities, with effective anti-poverty programs to ensure every American a life of dignity.
Health Care as a Right: Establish an improved “Medicare For All” single-payer public health insurance program to provide everyone with quality health care, at huge savings.
A Just Economy: Set a $15/hour federal minimum wage. Break up “too-big-to-fail” banks and democratize the Federal Reserve. Reject gentrification as a model of economic development. Support development of worker and community cooperatives and small businesses. Make Wall Street, big corporations, and the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Create democratically run public banks and utilities. Replace corporate trade agreements with fair trade agreements.
Protect Mother Earth: Lead on a global treaty to halt climate change. End destructive energy extraction: fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil trains, mountaintop removal, and uranium mines. Protect our public lands, water supplies, biological diversity, parks, and pollinators. Label GMOs, and put a moratorium on GMOs and pesticides until they are proven safe. Protect the rights of future generations.
Racial Justice Now: End police brutality and mass incarceration. Create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to understand and eliminate the legacy of slavery that lives on as pervasive racism in the economy, education, housing, and health. Ensure that communities control their police rather than police controlling our communities, by establishing police review boards and full time investigators to look in to all cases of death in police custody. Demilitarize the police.
Freedom and Equality: Expand women’s rights, protect LGBTQIA+ people from discrimination, defend indigenous rights and lands, and create a welcoming path to citizenship for immigrants. Protect the free Internet, legalize marijuana/hemp, and treat substance abuse as a public health problem, not a criminal problem.
Justice for All: Restore our Constitutional rights, terminate unconstitutional surveillance and unwarranted spying, end persecution of government and media whistleblowers, close Guantanamo, abolish secret kill lists, and repeal indefinite detention without charge or trial.
Peace and Human Rights: Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights. End the wars and drone attacks, cut military spending by at least 50% and close the 700+ foreign military bases that are turning our republic into a bankrupt empire. Stop U.S. support and arms sales to human rights abusers, and lead on global nuclear disarmament.
Empower the People: Abolish corporate personhood. Protect voters’ rights by establishing a constitutional right to vote. Enact electoral reforms that break the big money stranglehold and create truly representative democracy: public campaign financing, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, and open debates.
Ultimately, America needs to move past the concept of a horse-race, winner-take-all approach to elections. We need to recognize the strengths of viewpoints of all of the candidates who, against all odds, have offered themselves as alternatives. We suggest that all trustworthy candidates agree to participate in a fusion type of administration by bringing their ideas and specialties to the table for consideration.
It is Americans who are the government and those elected are working for us. In this way we signal to the world not just the election of a candidate but a change which goes far deeper, by learning the needs of our citizenry over the needs of a political party.
For a clearer picture of where to cast that vote, there needs to be a series of debates featuring all five candidates — Jill Stein (Green Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Rocky de la Fuente (Reform Party), Donald Trump (Republican Party), and Hillary Clinton (Democratic Party). Currently, all you get are Donald and Hillary, an absurd snub to prevent “we the people” candidates from participating. The Commission on Presidential Debates needs to rethink the 15 percent polling threshold, but it is not likely since the commission is controlled by Democrats and Republicans who have put up barriers in order to gain exclusivity.
Remember, our first president, George Washington, refused to align himself with any political party. He was right in his belief that partisanship and division in the federal government would decimate its ability to effectively handle the country’s affairs. That’s why the Iconoclast has always encouraged those elected to office to immediately resign from their party as their first act and, in effect, stand on their own two feet as individualists, not corporate peons and certainly not political party lobbyists. Maybe someday!
True power rests in the hands of the people as individuals and in the communities they build, something that has been bypassed of late. Transforming America into a world that is sustainable and responsive to life and the earth requires this be visibly acknowledged. The coming together for a fusion administration can become that symbol, sending out notice of a new direction and very different reality, one filled with cooperation and putting the wishes of the electorate first.
In reality, the two major political parties are medieval parasites that suck creative negotiations and arrays of ideas from individuals elected to serve. The end result? Stalemates, gridlock, inaction, and never finding Point B. This is a good reason for conservatives who might not initially be completely on board with Stein’s positions to get involved in her campaign, to share their positions and attempt to arrive at ideas that work for all. She is the honest candidate, something currently unattainable from the Democratic and Republican Party offerings. With the bigger parties falling apart, you do have a solid place to go with your influence and support.
Our country is at a crossroads. Jill Stein will inclusively and imperatively represent the masses as a positive force for our nation. We must put an end to the toxic turmoil that has been force-fed to us.
The voters have a choice, billionaires whose visions reside in Wall Street and gigantic corporations, who are pro-war because of profits and have personally amassed, often illegally, vast wealth, or the other choice, “we the people.”
— W. Leon Smith
Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute this editorial.
GOING TO ORLANDO…
If you’re going to Orlando, wear purple flowers in your hair…
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2016/06/if-youre-going-to-orlando-wear-purple.html
How convenient for America’s deep state that Muslims and gays have become such targets of hate. “Better them than us!” Logically, Americans should all be totally hatin’ on the new surveillance state and the new billionaire state and the new police state that America has degenerated into — but Americans have been conditioned to hate Muslims and gays and women instead. How convenient.
On June 22, I leave for Orlando, Florida in order to attend the American Library Association’s annual convention. To paraphrase that old 1960s song, I will be wearing purple flowers in my hair. And a hijab too! Plus I’m already a woman. http://2016.alaannual.org/
But I’m sure that I’ll still be perfectly safe in Orlando. Why? Because the media and the cops and the FBI won’t be after me because I won’t be fitting their profile for what a mass shooter would be like. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/steele-every-single-terrorist-attack-u-s-false-flag-egged-intelligence-services.html
Unlike Lee Harvey Oswald, Omar Mateen, Mohamad Atta, etc. I don’t have a history of working for the military, the CIA or any other top security agency or defense contractor. Nor have I been highly-trained by professionals in the fine art of effectively firing deadly weapons. I leave that to Blackwater and the Marines. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-12/orlando-shooter-worked-security-company-which-tranports-illegal-immigrants-deep-insi
Unlike the guy who killed John Lennon, I don’t have friends in high places.
Unlike September 11, 2001, Boston or Sandy Hook, I haven’t announced any military drills or fake “exercises” to take place while I’m in Orlando.
Unlike the Columbine, Sandy Hook, Red Lake, Virginia Tech, Charleston, Aurora, Navy Yard etc. shooters, I won’t be taking any prescription-drug anti-depressants approved by the FDA.
Unlike witnesses’ descriptions of the multiple shooters involved in the San Bernardino, JFK, MLK, RFK and Paris shootings, I’ll be traveling alone. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/06/12/orlando/
Unlike the American deep state and Israeli neo-colonialists, I won’t have a strong motive and won’t benefit from either a terrorist attack or any other type of act that deliberately stirs up hatred. I’m really a pretty peaceful person, really. https://www.sott.net/article/320084-Another-FBI-patsy-Alleged-Orlando-shooter-Omar-Mateen-was-known-to-FBI-for-3-years
So I think I’ll be safe in Orlando next week. Especially if I wear some purple flowers in my hair.
PS: With regard to the Orlando massacre, Clinton has just vowed to keep “war” off the streets of America — hopefully not in the same manner that she has kept “war” off the streets of Libya, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Kosovo, etc.
Election Process Needs To Change
We have a very stupid and controlling process of delegates really determining who the candidate will be and NOT the American voters. Same thing with the electoral college in the regular election.
The people should be the ones who determine their President. The process needs to be changed, but of course that would mean those in charge would have to give up power and we all know that won’t happen.
These days the American people and their needs seldom come first.
On President Obama’s Hiroshima Visit
President Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima since the bombing 71 years ago in 1945.
Japan seeks not an apology or reparation but an awareness and intimate connection to the common humanity we all share and that is at once threatened by the continued existence of nuclear weapons.
Any nation that continues to keep these weapons is not more secure or powerful but rather a bully ready to threaten others and indeed themselves.
Current scientific and medical research has drawn an even closer connection between nuclear war and catastrophic climate change. We now recognize that a small regional nuclear war for example between Pakistan and India using 100 Hiroshima-size bombs and representing less than ½ percent of the global nuclear arsenals would put at risk the lives of two billion people on the planet from the global famine that would follow.
The ballistic thermonuclear weapons on a single U.S. Trident submarine can produce this same disaster. The U.S. has 14 of them, plus a fleet of land-based missiles and strategic bombers.
The old adage of MAD for Mutually Assured Destruction is now better termed SAD for Self Assured Destruction as whomever would unleash such an attack would put their own people at risk from this climate change becoming de facto suicide bombers.
We must ignore the voices who continue to promote the myth of nuclear deterrence which in reality is the greatest driver of the arms race. They do so either out of ignorance of the effects of these weapons, suicidal ideation, raging irrational hatred, or financial gain for war profiteers who make and sell these weapons of extinction.
Indeed, the continued existence of these weapons comes at a staggering financial burden as well. We are spending $4 million an hour on nuclear weapons and the Obama administration proposes the U.S. spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to pursue a second nuclear arms race that, in turn, will encourage the other nuclear powers to follow our lead and do likewise. These current and proposed massive expenditures rob future generations of critical funds needed to address their basic needs including the threat of climate change.
It is important for President Obama to meet with Hibakusha, survivors of the attack, and listen to what they are saying. For more than seven decades the Hibakusha have tried to make the world understand the full horror of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to make sure that nuclear weapons are never used again. Like survivors of the Nazi Holocaust they have, over and over again, made themselves relive the most painful experiences imaginable in the hope that others will not have to suffer their fate. For decades nuclear-armed states have talked about these weapons as though they were playing some abstract game of chess. The Hibakusha make flesh and blood the real nature of nuclear war.
President Obama came to office offering the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, but since the successful negotiation of the New START treaty, which was a major step in that direction, even considering his groundbreaking Iran nuclear deal, his administration has seemingly abandoned that goal.
The United States has refused to join the growing Open Ended Working Group of more than 140 nations supporting a nuclear weapons ban treaty, just as other weapons from chemical, to biologic, and land mines have been banned.
If the President is serious about seeking a world free of nuclear weapons, we must change course. We need to abandon the trillion dollar nuclear spending spree and embrace instead the international movement to eliminate nuclear weapons and the existential threat to human survival that they pose.
In Hiroshima, we don’t need another speech. We need a new nuclear weapons policy.
We have a choice – to continue down the path of a second nuclear arms race or to abide by our legal treaty obligations as required under Article VI of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and to move toward nuclear disarmament.
So, we the people implore you, Mr. President, as you process your experience, the choice is clear. You have the opportunity to make history. Choose life Mr. President. The world longs for your leadership on this issue. This is our prescription for survival.
Robert F. Dodge, M.D., is a practicing family physician, writes for PeaceVoice, and serves on the boards of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Beyond War, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, and Citizens for Peaceful Resolutions.
Bridge To Wellbeing?
According to journalist Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Koch supported this new initiative as a way to counter an increasingly negative public image while attempting to reframe public discussions of the “free market” ideology he has so long espoused. Although the program may seem like a minor curiosity with so much attention focused on presidential politics, it is significant because its central concern – wellbeing – represents a nexus of issues affecting almost every aspect of American life today. From the declining lifespans of white, middle-aged Americans (particularly those without a high school education) to record levels of suicide (up by 24% from 1999 to 2014), from the lead-tainted waters of Flint, Michigan, to the opioid epidemic now afflicting over two million Americans, you’ll find it hard to read a newspaper today without seeing some reference to a serious issue affecting the physical and emotional health of our citizens. And the troubling fact is that each of these issues is inextricably linked to a web of related problems.
For example, the increased death rates for middle-aged white Americans (ages 45-54 years) was first discovered last year by the Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who found that the increase in mortality from 1999 to 2013 (22% for people with a high school education or less) had much to do with increasing levels of distress, chronic pain, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide. The contamination of Flint’s water system, meanwhile, has also been a painful reminder to many observers that over half a million American children ages one to five have excessive levels of lead in their blood. This poisoning is traceable to lead paint in older homes, to soil tracked into the homes, and to water sources – and it disproportionately affects children in poor communities and communities of color.
Free-Market Individualism
For many years, Charles Koch and his brother David have vilified the idea of collective responsibility for the kinds of health-related problems described above, and the Bridge to Wellbeing program is no different in its approach. If you visit the Bridge website, you’ll find a section entitled “Policies Affecting You,” and the brief policy statements appearing there address a wide range of issues, from “Health Care and Entitlements” to “Energy and Environment” and “Technology.” In all the statements, an ideology of free-market individualism predominates. You can see it in assertions that government spending on food stamps has “grown out of control in recent years;” or that minimum wage legislation has been “hurting the unemployed and the very same young and low-skilled workers it is intended to help;” or that the use of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 to protect wetlands is an abuse by federal regulators who have employed the act to “relentlessly expand their reach over both land and water use.”
This ideology supports the economic self-interest of a family with immense holdings in oil, gas, coal, chemicals, and lumber, but it has little to do with meaningful efforts to advance human wellbeing. Though the “Bridge” workshops may have merit in their own right, the program as a whole evades the fact that people’s physical and emotional health requires strong social supports. No number of workshops on budgeting or healthy eating will clean up the waters of Flint or address the systemic racism and environmental injustice that led to their contamination in the first place. No helpful classes on couponing will address the rent and mental health crises in my home county of Los Angeles, where 47,000 people are now living on the streets, with the number rising each year.
For many years, Charles Koch and his brother have been major players in orchestrating the growing influence of free market, or neoliberal, ideology over American government at all levels, and it is no surprise to see the ideology dominating Republican presidential politics over the past year. Yet the challenges to our wellbeing will not go away no matter who is elected this November, and the illusory nature of Mr. Koch’s bridge reminds us of what is at stake.
We need only connect the dots to see that Mr. Koch’s structure is a bridge to nowhere. The only true bridge to human wellbeing is a just society.
Andrew Moss, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an emeritus professor at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he taught a course, “War and Peace in Literature,” for 10 years.