What Did You Expect?

Our guest blogger asks the obvious question after the fiasco in DC this past week. No, it's not, "What happened?" or even "What now?" but it's a great question. See if you don't agree with Redd's question and answer.

What Did You Expect?
By Redd Phlagg

The amount of whining and groaning emanating from social media platforms this past week has been beyond measure.  Even when I stick my fingers in my ears and hum loudly I can still hear: “We need witnesses! Why aren’t they allowing witnesses to be called? You can’t have a trial without evidence or witnesses, can you?”

And the worse moan of all: “I thought we were going to get rid of Trump. I believed this impeachment stuff was really going to work. Checks and balances, right? Why doesn’t the system work the way it’s supposed to?”

Taking my fingers out of my ears, I will now reply to your cries of bewilderment. My dear children, the system is working the way it’s supposed to. It has protected one of its own—a rich, white, cisgender male who owns lots of property. The system was created to protect these individuals and not the community as a whole.  

The system is working perfectly as it was designed because it’s fooled you into thinking it was “fair” and “balanced” all along. Am I right? If it were a system of fairness and balance, then ten years ago we wouldn’t have had the Citizens United ruling that states in effect, “Money is speech,” because that would mean the poor have no voice whatsoever in the affairs of our governance, and a “fair” system wouldn’t allow that sort of thing to happen. But it did, and it still does.
 
We are a nation of property laws. Property owners have rights. The more property you own, the more rights you have to use and abuse it as you see fit. The more money you have, the more influence you have on those who make and defend the property laws. Thus, you can mold and bend the law to work in the way that’s in your best interests. 

What does the Trump trial in the Senate have to do with property and wealth? Everything! Those senators didn’t get elected without a lot of money to campaign on, most of which came from Super PACs and billionaire donors. Most of those billionaires inherited their wealth from their family’s property or business and then used that seed money to buy even more property/natural resources and businesses to become even wealthier and more powerful. 

After all, if  “Money is speech” then billionaires have the most powerful speech on earth. These billionaires (and their boot-licking supporters) want to keep things the way they are so they can continue to prosper financially and have things their way. To allow the system to become “fair” overnight in order to punish a wrong-doer such as Trump would mean they could be next. And they can’t have that.

We poor folks might actually expect a “fair system” of government to hold billionaires hiding behind corporation logos accountable for not telling us about the climate warming potential of burning fossil fuels or the radioactivity caused by drilling and fracking for oil and gas. We poor folks might tell these “citizens with rights” that it’s their responsibility to clean up their messes and stop polluting our lakes and rivers with animal factory effluence and chemicals because we drink the water and we live here. 

But we can’t tell them that—we’re speechless without vast sums of money, remember? And it wouldn’t matter much if we could speak anyway. The current system of laws tells property-owners they don’t have to listen to us whiny poor folks. We can’t threaten their right to use and abuse their “property” such as our lakes, rivers and streams as they wish unless we want to be thrown into jail—which essentially what Ohio House Bill 33 and similar laws in nineteen other states say. It says that by protesting “infrastructure” (as defined by the property-owners and our property laws) we can be deemed “terrorists” and thrown into jail for a very long time. 

If laws like HB33 don’t shut down the speechless, this will: the federal Environmental Protection Agency loosened its laws recently that protected our waterways in order to help the property owners to use and abuse their property. Face it, everything belongs to the billionaires because they say so. Their puppets in the White House, courts, and statehouses do as they’re told with no questions asked because they’re salivating at the chance to own a piece of that property alongside their billionaire friends.

We have the right to sit in silence and take it up the backside if we agree to continue living under this system. We have the right to sit and moan about how “unfair” it is for our elected representatives to not allow a trial to go forward in the Senate against a corrupt president. But there’s one thing we don’t have the right to, and that is, we don't have the right to act ignorant that this was going to be the outcome all along.

What did you expect? A democracy? Wake up, America! You’ve never lived in one!

A democracy is where everyone’s rights are equal—the rich, the poor, the black, the white, the male, the female, the gay, the straight, the young, the old… Under our current laws and system of government, billionaire property owners are definitely “more equal” than either you or me.

As long as the corrupt duopolists remain in power, we will have more of the same. It’s why both establishment parties keep protecting the system at all costs and won’t allow any third parties to have a say so in it because—heaven forbid!--these independent-minded people might just want to institute democratic reforms, such as ranked choice voting.

But now is not the time to sit and moan—now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their fellow countrypersons, to save the planet from the impending climate emergency, and to stop wishing for a different or “fair” outcome from the same corrupt system. 

Doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different outcome… You do realize that’s the definition of insanity, don’t you? 

Act sane. Act differently. Think outside the box. Create a better world.

BIO: Redd Phlagg's crystal ball predicts the future. No one believed Redd's prognostication that Trump would serve out the full length of his term outside of a prison cell, but once again Redd has been proven right. It's tough being right all the time says Redd, especially when it comes to how the corrupt system will reward people like Trump and his cronies, but there you go. When you vote for the lesser of two evils, evil always wins.

Related articles:

Corporations Would Literally Kill You To Turn a Profit
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/corporations-profit-values-murder-culture-boeing

The United States is a Nation Under Minority Rule, a Perversion of Democracy
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/the-united-states-is-a-nation-under-minority-rule-a-perversion-of-democracy

Dems Getting Republicans to Run as Dems (video): https://youtu.be/S2e4H03lXIY

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We should be making it easier for workers to claim the Social Security benefits they’ve earned with every paycheck, not harder. So why has the Trump administration proposed a new rule that’s designed to rip benefits away from hundreds of thousands of Americans with disabilities?

That’s the Republican strategy. Uphold capitalistic greed at the expense of working people.

While Social Security is best known as a retirement program, disability and survivor’s benefits are equally essential. That’s why we’re rallying with our allies across the country to fight back against this proposed rule change and save the lives of thousands of Americans.

Stand with us to stop the Trump administration’s cruel policy before it’s implemented.

SUBMIT AN OFFICIAL COMMENT

We know what the effects of the Trump proposal would be, because Ronald Reagan implemented a very similar benefit cut back for over 200,000 Americans in the 1980s. 

The New York Times reported that during the Reagan administration “people with obvious physical and mental disabilities” lost their benefits “without having been interviewed” by the Social Security Administration. This led to the loss of 21,176 lives of people who relied on their Social Security benefits to survive.

And, while Reagan was eventually forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry, the Trump administration is bringing back this cruel policy with no regard for history or human life.

The Trump administration proposal would require millions of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries to re-prove their eligibility for benefits as often as every six months—far more frequently than is currently the case.

Join CPD Action and allies like Social Security Works, the AFL-CIO, Demand Progress and more to fight back against the Trump administration’s brazen cruelty. Submit an official comment to the Social Security Administration to oppose the proposed rule change that will result in hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries losing their earned Social Security benefits.

We must stop Trump’s plan. The Social Security Administration is collecting comments on the proposal until January 31, at midnight. Click here to submit your official comment now.

Thank you for fighting back against attempts to undermine and destroy our Social Security system.

In solidarity, 

Jennifer Epps-Addison
Network President & Co-Executive Director, CPDA

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We’re only a month into 2020 and it’s already been a crazy year. Between Trump almost taking us into a war with Iran, deploying Easy Fire Nukes, and circumventing diplomacy with nuclear-armed countries in favor of antagonistic threats — all while he has his finger on the nuclear red button — our small but mighty team is just as busy as ever. We can’t stress enough that activists like you are what keeps us going and why we will be successful in the fight to prevent nuclear violence. Here are your monthly actions to help win that fight.

Your action steps on No First Use:
Our main priority in 2020 is driving momentum toward No First Use legislation in Congress. There’s some easy steps you can take to show your representatives that you support No First Use and want them to as well.

1) Sign the petition for No First Use;
2) Share the petition with a friend;

3) Click to tweet in support of No First Use!

How you can prevent war with Iran:

On January 3, the U.S. killed the top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, in a drone strike, representing a major escalation of a crisis manufactured by Trump. Then, Iran predictably retaliated against the U.S. by launching missile strikes at Iraqi bases housing American forces. While it’s good news that we have avoided a war thus far, our work is not yet over. Here’s what you can do to prevent an Iraq 2.0:

1) Sign and send the petition to call on Congress to not allow the U.S. to enter into a war with Iran;
2) Share the petition with a friend;
3) Follow our friends at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), who are doing incredible frontline work to fight for the rights of Iranian-Americans and stop a war with Iran;
4) Click to tweet in support of #NoWarWithIran!

Uplifting the voices of impacted communities:
New year, same focus on centering the voices of frontline communities.
Rachel Traczyk, Fellowship Associate and former BombSquad fellow, has been focused on uplifting the forgotten stories of those directly impacted by nuclear weapons testing. In November, she visited the Trinity test site to bear witness to the damage done to the people and the planet by the first nuclear test to ever occur. Rachel also wrote this piece in Inkstick Media on the story of Cecilia Romero, a New Mexican Downwinder.

We will win through intersectional organizing:
We again joined the Women’s March as partners to raise our voices against war, nuclear weapons, and the patriarchy. Partnerships Manager Yasmeen Silva represented Beyond the Bomb at the Poor People’s Campaign day of action in Washington, D.C. this week to challenge the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. And don’t forget to join us for the Mass Poor People’s Assembly & Moral March on Washington June 20, 2020!

2020 is going to be a big year:

A reimagined anti-nuclear movement for the 21st century — led by young people and giving voice to those most impacted by nuclear violence — is rising. We need your help more than ever this year to fight for justice and raise awareness of the dangers of the undemocratic nuclear system.

This is why we’re starting off 2020 with a Make Love Not War campaign during the month of February! As we get closer to the 2020 election, we need to make sure every candidate and representative knows we’re putting our #FutureFirst, and breaking up with nuclear weapons. Stay tuned next week to see how you can get involved!

Donate to Beyond the Bomb

In solidarity,
The Beyond the Bomb team