National politics have become so terrifying that it’s a time and energy drain. I keep trying to understand what’s going on in my own terms, which are based on WWII culture — not very helpful. But now and then someone makes a statement that rings like a bell. Or all by myself I have an insight that might be nuts and might truly be insight.
The Repub and Dem parties are really a duopoly, interlocked to maintain the status quo. They only pretend opposition. Trump came in promising to break that up, but didn't tell us he intended to become it.
Third parties like Sanders or Stein can be played as spoilers, never becoming effective.
Because of the Internet, what would have been diasporas with little influence are rapidly forming into constituencies as though they were people living in contact because of proximity, like a city or country. They have interests in common. This is particularly meaningful to scattered people like tribes, gays, and Puerto Ricans. Consequences are still a little bit in the future, but they are real. These folks are savvy enough to create their own internet via blockchain. No need to hack.
The thing about stigmatized minorities is that the entitled majority almost always underestimates them and cannot understand their point of view, so cannot accurately predict them, even if they finally realize there are points of view in the world that are quite different from those of the ruling class. We do not admit how synergistic underclasses and stigmatized people -- like sex workers -- are enabling supposedly “respectable” people to maintain their own law-breaking in comfort. That could be disrupted. Think #MeToo.
The Repub party, specifically, has split into two factions: one that is committed to Trump and fantasizes him in terms that are ridiculous to the rest of us. This would not be possible except that the rest of the party will not intervene. Major laws are broken, court orders ignored, but these folks merely observe -- no action or even acknowledgement. Both factions must be convinced that these strategies are protecting them and their wealth, which they imagine is real. They do not realize they have become merely a laundromat for dirty money, which evaporates by daylight.
Politicians have become convinced that the merchandizing money machine is the only way to achieve office, that votes are “bought” one way or another. Thus, money IS their key to office, or at least laws and regulations that allow money-making activities regardless of consequences. It also means short-term focus, election to election.
The idea that Trump is an “asset” (active spy and traitor) for Putin is defensible. Even intense mockery of their bromance can be explained in terms of Trump’s father-formed world-view, partly because it is so crass and simple. Wealth, dominance, patriarchy. An idea of Russia/USA as a duopoly, but of the leaders rather than the people. Putin and Trump feel they are equals. Well, maybe Trump thinks so. Putin can have nothing but contempt for erratic childishness.
Mueller is not an individual with an agenda but a responsible designated leader of a Democratic process according to the Rule of Law. He is not one-of-a-kind (though an excellent example of classic honor), did not begin this investigation, nor would his loss end it. Trump and his circle do not recognize the Rule of Law nor the Constitution as anything but arbitrary inconvenience. They have the same view of the UN. The outcome of this investigation will teach them. (God will not intervene.) Trump is not an anomaly, but a re-emergent representative of business and government, another duopoly that has twisted and ignored laws for decades.
This phenomenon emerged in part because of the intellectual and emotional revolution of the Sixties and Seventies which challenged the standing order as corrupt and made defiance legitimate if it were for a good end, like the end of racism, stigmas, and injustices that erode trust. It was not that movement, but the pushback against the challenge which became a wave of sympathy for criminals and chancers.
After WWII when Japan and Germany became so strong in technology and corporations, people said jokingly, "Next time (which was assumed), let’s not go to war with them — let’s just let them buy us." We should think about that more. Wars enrich some people by selling guns, but dead people don’t buy butter. Much of our vital food production has been sold to foreign countries, even enemies. The suicide rate of aging farmers is higher than that of teens.
Related to this is the VP’s statement that women should have babies and not abortions because the US workforce is aging and needs replacing. Someone give him a ticket to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Today a governor blocked abortions for fetuses with Down Syndrome. What jobs did he have in mind for them?
Clearly, if the FBI-CIA were the secret destroyers of the World Trade Towers, they had very bad intel. It was the Trump Tower that was headquarters for hostile Russians (the peaceful ones were at Brighton Beach), as well as Mafia of several kinds, as well as Trump’s own syndicates. The tower sells unoccupied apartments to park money and as broadcast locations. Government agencies, even the ones put there to protect Trump, were banished to the sidewalk.
The euphemism for Mafia is RICO. “Passed in 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law designed to combat organized crime in the United States. It allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.” https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/content/rico-act.html When they say Trump may be indicted on RICO, they mean he is Mafia. This is separate from being a Russian “asset.” It is specific to the United States in terms of laws, but no doubt extends into other countries.
We have not heard what Interpol thinks about all this. But international attention to money-laundering, secretive banks in island nations, international drug-smuggling, all of that threatens big donor bribes and blackmail worldwide. Such things are of interest to United Nations, so the UN needs to be kept legitimized. What's the name of that game where you stack odd-shaped blocks or pull them out until the pile collapses?
International corporations have become rival nations without boundaries. This fantasy of a business being a “person” seemed useful at first, a kind of democracy in which shareholders were the voters. But greed, as in nations, quickly turned profit-driving into gambling machinery that tried to force outcomes regardless of consequences, particularly those destroying the environment.
Internet-supported data-gathering and algorithms have exceeded the goals of some of these corporations and have become invaders of nations, controllers of minds, so powerful that no one can really understand them, much less control them. The whole ground of wealth is shifting but traceable because records on the Internet never go away. It is the death of secrecy.
The idea of ownership, particularly ownership and governance of land within boundaries, is challenged. But we are not even effectively challenging the ownership and governance of persons, either as populace or as individuals, as countries, as families, as employers.
Present Congress persons are shifting from complacency to exit strategy, taking with them whatever they can. The next election will be based on ideas. I hope. Not many are up for a fight, but some are, and they are pretty tough.
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