Recent events have shown that our government has no legitimacy at all. None.
As a result, we should all be out in the streets every day. We should be joining a revolution in response to the incendiary words of the Declaration of Independence identifying the right and duty of citizens to dethrone abusive governments:
“. . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce (the People to) absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
With this posting, I’m inviting us to think about rebellion in the light of the most egregious of the “abuses and usurpations” we have been made to endure.
And here I’m not just referring to the outrageous Trump administration whose “tax reform” ignores the country’s majority and which is in the process of looting our national treasury on behalf of the already filthy rich. Just watch: they’ll soon be coming for our Social Security and IRAs.
[By the way, do you know what that tax plan represents? It’s not just a refusal to tax the rich to pay for schools, hospitals, roads and bridges – and those ridiculous wars. Rather, it’s a plan to borrow from the rich to pay for those senseless conflicts. In other words, instead of having the 1% pay for their oil wars; we’re paying them! Taxpayers borrow from the banksters to meet those “unfunded mandates,” and then PAY THEM INTEREST rather than COLLECT THEIR TAXES!! The result will be an additional $1 trillion in debt over the next 10 years. What a scam on the part of those liars who up until the Trump election were deficit hawks!]
But that’s not what I’m addressing here.
Neither am I referring to Trump’s completely arbitrary, unlawful, and severe provocation of Muslims across the world by his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Everyone knows that Zionist repression of Palestinians is the root cause of Islamic terrorism. Yet (to avoid Rex Tillerson’s more explicit designation) this effing moron is in effect inviting further 9/11s. (Remember that when the inevitable attack comes and everyone’s asking again, “Why do they hate us?”)
I’m not even referencing climate change and the ignorant decision on the part of “the most dangerous political organization in the history of the world” to unilaterally deprive our grandchildren of nature’s abundance. (Those are the words of Noam Chomsky. Regarding such despotism, he has famously said, “The party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand.”)
No one has the right to commit such outrage.
All of those acts (and many others) should be enough to persuade us that any trace of democracy we may have once enjoyed is gone. The man in the White House and these criminals in Washington don’t represent any of us – just their club of plutocrats that includes Democrats as well as Republicans.
But even their latest acts of gross ignorance and unprecedented kleptomania are insignificant compared to their greatest outrage.
And here I get to my main point.
It involves not just the Trump administration, but all of the criminals who have run our national horror show since the end of the Second Inter-Capitalist War (aka World War II). They’ve all been terrorists and mass murderers. ALL of them: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and now Trump.
According to Daniel Ellsberg’s new book, The Doomsday Machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner, every one of them stood ready to use nuclear weapons to incinerate 98% of the world’s population in one fell swoop. Ninety-eight percent! (Ellsberg, of course, is the most famous whistle-blower in history – the one who released The Pentagon Papers in 1971. Now his new book reveals what he learned during his stint as an insider formulating U.S. nuclear war policy.)
That policy was not just about deterrence or response to a first strike by the Soviets. It involved a policy of FIRST STRIKE now so dear to Mr. Trump’s heart. Eisenhower, for instance, was firm in his insistence that in time of crisis there could be no waiting for a Russian attack. For him (and subsequent occupants of the White House) our country had to strike first. In Eisenhower’s mind and in those of his successors, “first strike” was best and “second strike” was a distant second best. “No strike” when provoked was unthinkable.
Guided by such policy, from the early ‘50s onward, plans targeted every city of over 25,000 inhabitants in Russia and its satellites, and in China too.
The planned destruction is mind boggling.
How many people would be killed? How about 100 Holocausts – 600 million? That was the Pentagon estimate when the world’s population was 3 billion.
And it didn’t even count deaths resulting from Russian and Chinese retaliation!
Neither did it take into account the smoke and debris that would be swept up into the atmosphere blocking out the sun and causing nuclear winter. That climate change would make food production impossible and have any survivors starve to death (except perhaps about 2% of the world’s population near sea coasts that could provide mollusks and other ocean foods).
Pentagon estimates are that about 2/3 of the planet’s population would perish. Actually, (counting deaths from Russian and Chinese responses) the figure would be far closer to 3/3.
No one should have decision-making power like that. In Jefferson’s words, its arrogation by morons amounts to “abuses and usurpations” designed to reduce us all to circumstances equalling “absolute Despotism.”
But it gets worse. According to Ellsberg, no single person had the power to initiate a nuclear war. Many people did (and do) — down to the rank of Major in the field or Pacific Fleet commanders in the navy. If communication were cut off, and if those morons judge they are under nuclear attack, they have the power to respond in kind.
Is that terrifying enough for you? “Abuses and usurpations” anyone?
The fact is we are all effing morons for allowing this non-government to survive without rebellion.
So what should we do in response to such outrages? At this point, I’m not sure about particular steps. But at the very least we should
- Throw the bums out. In 2018 truly drain the swamp. Get rid of ALL Republicans and their Democrat enablers.
- Replace them with Bernie Progressives – with a goal of reviving the New Deal that provably raised living standards for all Americans, not just the rich.
- Institute a special war tax to fund the on-going war on terrorism – to be increased with each new conflict.
- Before imposing such taxes, hold nation-wide binding referenda on their advisability.
- Stop dead our country’s nuclear weapons modernization program.
- Begin serious world-wide negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
- Force Israel to honor U.N. Resolution 242, thus removing the major cause of international terrorism.
And if none of that works, make discussion of rebellion and revolution respectable again – in the name of Jefferson’s brave words. It’s our patriotic duty!
The only action omitted here, Mike, is that we first fall on our knees in humble supplication to God — – not just the God of Christians, Jews and Muslims, but those entities that have preached a similar message for peace and human rights over the
millennia. (‘The Spirit moves where it wills…’) The second thing we need to do as citizens is to leave the sidelines, vote the
bastards out of office, get our faces (and brains) out of our Smartphones, and take the necessary time to vet – to become enlightened, knowledgeable voters next time around and not have our votes pre-empted and nullified by corporate, military trolls. Oh – and, yes, dump the Electoral College.
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Why hasn’t the Electoral College been long since dumped? Of course, it’s because the representatives of the 1% don’t really want our electoral voices heard. That’s especially true of the Republicans. But Democrats are surprisingly complicit too.
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I pretty much agree with every word in this excellent post.
The insouciant American public really does need to get out in the streets and protest, but I fear they won’t. The last war protest was when GW Bush was starting his obscene and counterproductive Iraq War. Truth of the matter is we should have protested some of Obama’s seven wars, too. Currently Trump’s approval ratings are so low I fear he will start a war with North Korea just to “wag the dog.”
The last protest about economic justice was the Occupy Movement, and they got stepped on. I fear mainstream Democrats are almost as bad at facilitating the greed of the one per cent as the Republicans. (What ever happened to the party of the people?)
Unfortunately, the Democrats are so obsessed with Russia-gate that they aren’t gathering their best weapons to oppose the obscene Republican tax cuts or the movement towards war with North Korea and/or Iran. I fear Russia-gate is a dead end. In spite of what we hear 24/7 in CNN and MSNBC there just isn’t any real evidence. It’s not enough to try to impeach Trump. We must work to make the Democratic Party more progressive and more supportive of the working class. Of course, Jesus would say, What about the poor? Neither party looks out for them.
Though his foreign policy could be better, I count myself as one of those Bernie progressives. They are the only hope. I do fear the corporate neoliberals will manage once again to shut them out. If it weren’t for the wild enthusiasm I saw at Bernie rallies, I think I would just throw in the towel.
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Good comment, Cave. I harbor those same fears you voice here. I still can’t understand why Democrats rolled over so easily and willingly in 2000, when the SCOTUS refused to count the votes in Florida. That’s when we should have been out in the streets the way voters are in Honduras at this very moment, when their conservative Electoral Commission is trying to steal their presidential election the way the Republicans did in 2000.
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