The Revolution Continues blog is news, views, opinion and other expressions of hope from a leftist point-of-view. (We are not affiliated with any candidate, political party or organization. All are welcome.)
Showing posts with label political campaigns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political campaigns. Show all posts
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Is No Democracy At All)
by C.A. Matthews
I believe most Americans understand that the United States is not a democracy or even qualifies as a representative democracy. The US is, in fact, an oligarchy, whichmeans politicians work for their big money donors and not for the people.
The Princeton Study proved that no matter how hard average voters try to influence their elected representatives—try to make them vote for or sponsor a bill that would benefit ordinary people and not billionaires—the result will be the same. Whatever corporations and the super rich folks who own them want, they’ll get. To put it plainly, “Screw the needs of ordinary Americans!”
I came across an example this week that illustrates the American oligarchy in action. I will make a few suggestions on how we can fight back against their tactics, but feel free to come up with some actions of your own. Please write them in the comments below because sharing knowledge is power. Thank you.
From a recent Jill Stein for President campaign email:
On Thursday June 27th, the FEC [Federal Elections Commission] informed us that our campaign had qualified for primary matching funds. Then minutes later, FEC told us the Treasury department will withhold our payments to give priority to general election funding–just in case the Democratic and Republican candidates decide they want it.
Let me explain why that’s so outrageous...
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As the US November election day rolls around, the question as to whom to vote for haunts me. Often times, I only vote on the issues on the ballot (such as Ohio’s Issue 1 allowing abortion care without government interference) and skip voting for any candidates for office. I just leave those boxes blank. If I don’t agree with a candidate's stances, and if I don’t agree where their particular political party stands on any of the issues, then I’m not wasting my time or vote on them. It’s as simple as that.
It makes for a pretty quick voting process. I used to feel a tinge of guilt at leaving so many races without a check mark, but not so much anymore. If a candidate doesn’t prove to me that they deserve my vote, they don’t get it. If neither one of the usual two candidates running for the same office deserve a vote, neither one gets mine. None of this “lesser evil” voting nonsense for me!
I’ve always found it odd that some believe politics is some kind of card game that forces you to play a card whether you want to or not. If a person is undeserving of office, then they’re undeserving. They don’t need my vote endorsing their inadequacy.
Five-time socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs said it well:
“It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.”
With next year being another one of those “most important election of our lives” (to paraphrase an overused soundbite), most American voters will feel obligated to tick a box for at least president, senator, and/or governor. My take is that presidential or gubernatorial elections are no different than off-year ones. Candidates I don’t approve of one-hundred percent don’t get my vote.
If a write-in space is provided, I might write in a name of someone I feel who is deserving. If third party candidates make it to the ballot (and in this state, that is extremely difficult), I give them a look-see and check out their party’s stances. I investigate all independents’ stances as well.
But who is deserving? I hear you ask. Good question. In the past I’d go through a long list of issues that were very important to me—such as universal health care, UBI, supporting the switch to clean energy sources, and guaranteed food and housing for all—and find out where a candidate stood on these basic issues. Sometimes this is easy, as candidates often will make stump speeches and give interviews detailing exactly where they stand.
If a candidate belongs to a particular political party, I will study their take on the issues and compare and contrast it to the candidate’s take. Nine times out of ten candidates will repeat exactly what the party bosses tell them to say. That one out of ten time they don’t, further research usually shows that they are acting like a “maverick” and are simply pretending not to go along with the party’s platform on that particular subject in order to get voters’ attention.
If a candidate is running for re-election, their voting record generally gives their worthiness or unworthiness away. It’s more like 9.9 times out of 10 a candidate running in an establishment party will vote the way they’re instructed to by party bosses no matter what the candidate actually verbalizes on the campaign trail. Not many status quo politicians are truly “their own person,” in other words.
Since the beginning of October 2023, however, I’ve come up with a much simpler political litmus test to determine which candidates are worthy of my vote. It boils down to this: Does this candidate condone the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza?
If a candidate says things straightforwardly like, “They're human animals! Death to Palestinians!” then I need not go any further. They’re struck off my list. If they try to soft-sell their stance by saying, “I grieve for the Palestinians killed, but/except I support Israel’s right to self-defense,” then I know they’re definitely off my list. They’re worse than the first guy who is an outright racist-bigot. At least the first candidate isn’t trying to sugarcoat genocide.
For those of you who argue that you can be opposed to the genocide of a people, but want to excuse yourself in order to kill a smaller subset of those same people, I’ll say this: What you're arguing is a logical fallacy along the lines of voting for the “lesser of two evils.”
Evil is evil. Period. Evil cannot be quantified. Some things just can’t be. Can someone be “less dead” or are they just “dead”? Dead is dead. Can you be okay with murdering “less” of a particular group of people and not be okay with murdering the entirety of those same people? Murder is murder. One premeditated killing is all it takes to be convicted of murder. The quality and quantity of evil are the same.
Trying to quantify genocide in any way, shape, or form is a signal that this person is a sociopath. The person who does so is actually equating the slaughter of innocents with “self-defense” in their sociopathic mind. Look at it this way: How many two-year-old Palestinians does a country need to be “defended against” through the use of ethnic cleansing or genocide? How many wheelchair-bound grandmothers does a country need to be “defended against”? If you said “one or two” then, please, find yourself a psychotherapist pronto and don’t run for office. We have more than enough sociopaths in politics already.
If you’re not mentally and/or morally impaired, you’ll intuit just how horrifying equating ethnic cleansing is to the concept of “self-defense.” If a candidate’s party also gives the “except/but” argument to where they stand on the use of genocide, then you’ll know this person isn’t worth voting for. As I stated before, it's more likely than not they’ll give the same answer to the question: “Are you okay with the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza?” Loyal party members stick together.
Very rarely will a candidate speak out against their own political party and remain within that party for long if they truly believe in what they’re saying. Leaving a political party is like experiencing a divorce, only worse. They instantly lose all their “friends” and supporters in that party. They instantly lose access to PACs/Super PACs and other funding sources to fund their campaign. Nobody will return their calls.
You might get an occasional, “I disagree with the party platform on this particular point,” comment, but if the candidate sticks with the party, then they’re pretty much saying they’re a loyal spouse. The only ones they’re “cheating on” are the voters, in a weak attempt to fool voters into thinking the candidate is something he/she is not.
If a candidate does speak out strongly against genocide and finds themselves kicked out of their party, then it could be worthwhile to check them out further. This person could be that very deserving and rare candidate who isn’t afraid to speak out on all the issues that you find important. If they’re able to speak up to support the voiceless innocents being bombed to pieces by racist war hawks, then perhaps they’ll have the guts to speak up for the rights of Americans to have access to health care and free education as well.
Another area that will reveal a candidate’s stance on this question is where and from whom do they receive their campaign funds. If a candidate receives any money from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), then they’ve automatically disqualified themselves. Can you imagine a candidate taking millions of dollars from AIPAC not saying, “The children of Gaza brought it upon themselves!” over and over again—even when confronted with shocking photos and videos of dead Palestinian children? Taking AIPAC and related monies to run for office is a very strong indicator they’re a sociopath who will do as they’re told by their genocide-enabling masters.
If a candidate and their political party are known for taking money from Big Oil and/or the Military Industrial Complex or its supporters, then they’ve pretty much given themselves away as sociopaths, haven’t they? Big Oil is killing our planet with excessive carbon pollution while fueling the engines of the War Machine that is currently genociding the Palestinians and other peoples throughout the world. Any candidate who is okay with their potential constituents dying of polluted air, water and food sources probably isn't going to lose any sleep over the genocide of millions in order for their corporate masters to get a chance to drill and make big profits from the oil reserves said to be located off the coast of Gaza.
I believe this litmus test will serve us all well this election and in elections to come. Feel free to use it and let me know how it worked for you. If anyone asks you about the litmus test you used to determine whom to vote for, tell them you found it at The Revolution Continues and share the link. Thanks.
With this new litmus test, we’ll be able to discern the sociopaths from the morally decent human beings running for office, candidates who can proudly say, “I don’t support genocide.” I hope in time, with less sociopaths in positions of power, our world will become a safer, healthier, and happier place for all. It's worth a try, isn't it?
The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data
coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of
narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its
allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant
glitch in the narrative matrix.
The longer this continues,
the more people are going to wake up out of the propaganda-induced coma
the empire has had them in all their lives. The more people are going to
realize that their government is not what it has been pretending to be
and the media have not been telling them the truth about the world. As
the western empire backs the slaughter of thousands of children, the
discrepancies between what the propaganda tells us about our society and
what our society actually is are being brightly illuminated.
By
murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its true
face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they see.
"A people, imprisoned in the world’s largest concentration camp for sixteen years, denied food, water, fuel and medicine, lacking an army, air force, navy, mechanized units, artillery, command and control and missile batteries, is being butchered and starved by one of the most advanced militaries on the planet, and they [the Palestinians] are the Nazis?" --Chris Hedges
Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch, captures the essence of genocide:
"When you declare total war against Gaza, which has been under perpetual siege since 1967 after being seized by Israel during the Six Day War, what is it you’re going to war against? There are no airbases, no army bases, no tank battalions, no air defense systems, no naval ports, no oil refineries, no rail system, no troop barracks, no armored personnel carriers, no howitzers, no satellite systems, no attack helicopters, no fighter jets, no anti-tank batteries, no submarines, no command-and-control centers. Just people, most of them women and kids."
It’s
been difficult, if not next to impossible, to become excited by the
American political scene in recent years. The whole electoral process
itself seems like a sham, a game meant to distract the public away
from things that really matter, like providing health care and housing
for all. The race results are decided
months,
if not years, in advance. The billionaires/oligarchs know exactly who
they want running the show so they can continue to benefit monetarily
from their endless wars for resources. They know which
Wall Street-owned candidate
will turn a blind eye and give them a free hand to abuse the workers
so production costs never cut too far into their profit margins.
Knowing
the futility of making any mark on
American
elections makes me
mad enough to throw a flaming Molotov cocktail into the whole
stinking cesspool of politicians, wiping them off the face of the
earth for good. Or maybe I could just throw a rock into their
mansions’ front windows
with a note attached declaring, “I'm mad as hell, and I'm
not taking it anymore!”
A
rock… Hey, that’s an idea!
Yard Rockrecently
announced
his run
for the White Housevia
his campaign manager, Lee Camp. Yard Rock is very old in geologic
age but very young when it comes to political campaigning. Still, he
has an impressive platform worth supporting:
Has
never supported a war (and never will)
Has never supported an increase in
Pentagon spending (and never will)
Did not support the Global War on
Terror that has killed roughly 6 million people
Did not support the invasion of
Iraq
Did not support the invasion of
Afghanistan
Did not support the invasion of
Libya
Has committed no war crimes (and
never will)
Has committed no rape or sexual
assault, nor even been accused (and never will)
Has never supported the US prison
state – largest prison population in the world (and never will)
Has not been involved in
increasing the US prison state (and never will)
Has never supported corporate tax
cuts (and never will)
Has never supported Big Pharma
(and never will)
Has never supported Big Ag (and
never will)
Has never supported Big Oil (and
never will)
Has never supported Big Banks (and
never will)
Has never supported corporate
media (and never will)
Has never endorsed the persecution
of Julian Assange (and never will)
Has never endorsed the propaganda
known as Russiagate (and never will)
Has never endorsed the anti-China
propaganda (and never will)
Has never supported cuts to food
stamps, social security, medicare, medicaid, housing programs,
public schools, infrastructure, or transportation (and never will)
Has never raised questions about
the veracity of the climate crisis (and never will)
Has never supported the
out-of-control police state (and never will)
Has never endorsed the pathetic
exploitative US healthcare system (and never will)
Has never doubted or fought
against Indigenous rights (and never will)
Has never taken a dime from
corporate America (and never will)
No Super PAC funding
Never accepted donations from Big Pharma, weapons manufacturing, etc. (This rock is not a puppet!)
Has never voted to send arms to
Israel
Did not vote for latest spending
bill
Did not support Trump’s tax cuts
for the rich
Did not support the 2008 bank
bailout
Did not support the PATRIOT Act
Did not support NAFTA
Currently holds no assets in stock
market
No appearance on Epstein’s
flight logs
Never endorsed a Democrat or
Republican candidate
Has never cooperated or supported
the FBI or CIA
Is not white
Has never appeared on SNL
Supports the efforts of wild orcas
to tip over yachts
I’m
really excited by the candidacy of Yard Rock. I think he’s a solid
candidate. It’s
hard not
to
love him. Only
the most igneous and sedimentary of American voters would ignore this
stone while he’s on a roll. He’s the
genuine
rolling stone, all right. (And
Keith
Richards is a mere child by comparison.)
I
know what you’re going to say next—you’re going to say, “But
how is Yard Rock at the podium and on camera? Can he engage
and energize
the voters, bringing
them to a Rocky Mountain high?
Will he be able to convince them to vote for his bolder than most
other candidates’ platforms?”
Yard
Rock, by his nature, is a rather quiet and deep individual. It’ll
be rough at first getting the public to know him. He’ll
need a little help in this area to smooth things over with those who don't believe a mineral has got what it takes. That’s why I’m volunteering my
skills as his speech writer. I want
to
do him proud and help him wow audiences with a
volcanic blast of oratory that will, in turn, make
him win the presidency by a landslide.
The
avalanche of support Yard Rock’s candidacy will
bring
will be further
amplified
when he picks his running mate. There’s no need to mine the field
of independent candidates too deeply. It isn’t rock-et science:
Yard Rock should cement his run by choosing Dr. Cornel West as his
vice president.
Dr.
West has numerous good qualities that will support Yard Rock’s
strengths.
He’s tall, speaks well, and has powerful
arms to carry Yard Rock from podium to podium as they campaign. They
already agree on so much, particularly on ending wars. They both
realize they’ll
face a mountain of opposition from candidates from the
corporate-owned-and-operated parties. (That is, the duopoly or
uni-party, or as they like call themselves “The Ds and the Rs”.
They seem to have suffered a fissure at some point and now think
they’re actually differentiated strata, but any good rock hound
knows better. They’re
a composite ore.)
What have these Wall Street manipulated mannequins of mass
destruction really got on the integrity
of Yard Rock and the highly regarded Dr. West? Nothing.
Nada.
They gleefully
bury
bodies with
the backhoe of the military-industrial complex profit-making machine,
but they don’t offer the electorate the hope and compassion that
Yard Rock and Dr. West grant it. There’s going to be a tremendous
earthquake in Washington DC the day the Rock/West team cracks open and exposes
the faults lining status quo politics as usual there.
I
don’t want Yard Rock and Dr. West to peak too soon, so I’ll end
it here for now. I hope I’ve dropped a pebble into your well
of consideration, and I recommend you check out a
candidate’s
web site before making your decision. I’m heartened by the fact
that Yard Rock has the backing of Team Orca, a wonderful group of
cetaceans who know when their ship has sailed
in. (Or
is that a yacht?)
We
truly can be “boulder together.”
P.S.
What sort of campaign theme tune should we have for Yard Rock/Cornel West 2024? I'm leaning toward classic rock, but Dr. West is well known as a jazz
lover. Perhaps a fusion of the two genres?
Coming soon, the first book from The Revolution Continues blog: The Little Red Book of Revolution
How can you get your e-copy? The easiest way is to subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack as a paying subscriber. Choose what level you'd like to subscribe at via the buttons on any post online at: https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com
If
you don’t think it's possible to write an article incorporating a climate catastrophe story along with the opening bell of an
alternative party presidential run story, then you have another thing
coming to you! It’s also includes poorly written filks of old
tunes as segues. (Sorry about that, but they just seem to fit.)
In
the news climate-wise, people in New York City were forced to
give up breathing this past week due to particulate pollution caused
by Canadian wildfires. The
Air Quality Index (AQI) in parts of Brooklyn
reached
484 — nearly
double San Francisco’s highest hourly reading during
California’s 2020 fire season. And
it wasn’t just New Yorkers who were gasping for air. The smoky haze
and micro-particulate clouds covered skies from Illinois
to Ohio to Pennsylvania to South Carolina to New York State to Maine…
In fact, just about everybody east of the Mississippi experienced
horrible air quality indices this week.
Who cares though, right? Breathing is for sissies! We're told that unhealthy AQIs can cause serious health issues for vulnerable
populations such as asthmatics and those with COPD as well as
children and the elderly. But what’s more important—keeping poor
working class people alive or growing sociopathic billionaires’
bank accounts? You know which group is more important to please for
those idiots in Washington DC and in your own statehouse, don’t
you? For your sake, I hope you do.
The
fossil fuel industry takes no responsibility for causing
a build up of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere
due to the
polluting by-products which
come from combustion engines and coal-fueled power plants. It’s not like carbon monoxide and other gases have caused the
so-called “greenhouse effect” that bring on heatwaves and dry up
the forests of North America. No, not at all. It’s just coincidence
that record breaking spring temperatures this year occurred. In no
way could they have helped to spontaneously ignite tender-dry forests
that have continued to burn unabated for weeks now. Pure
coincidence.
It’s
also pure coincidence that my garden in Northwest Ohio
hasn’t seen a speck of rain in over 21 days—setting a dry spell record that
is unheard of in the Midwest since the “Dust Bowl” era of the
1930s. The brown, hazy skies and dry winds that smell like a
permanent bonfire have only caused me to reach for my emergency
inhaler a dozen times this week.
Well,
who doesn’t need to quit breathing from time to time? The tears
streaming down my face from my smoke-irritated eyes can go a long
ways in filling our bone-dry rain barrels, too.
If
you’re thinking I’m being facetious, think again. Between the
millions who are still suffering from the lasting effects of COVID-19
and this recent air quality disaster, who knows just how many
Americans have or will suffer a debilitating illness that could
disable them for life? The time to take action to eliminate
the use of fossil fuels and other polluting methods to generate power
isn’t today—it was yesterday. In fact:
A newstudyby 50 leading scientists conducted to supplement the “information gap” betweenIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) reports said globalgreenhouse gas emissionshave soared to a record high and are threatening to push our planet into “unprecedented” global heating.
Which
leads me to the next story…
Oh,
hazy day! Oh, hazy day!
When
Cornel West… came to show us the way!
(*Sung
to the tune of Oh, Happy Day)
Cornel West at BGSU in 2017
This
next story is one that has captured the focus of many a leftist
thinker. Dr. Cornel West, academic, philosopher, and former
Bernie Sanders delegate to the DNC, has announced that he is running
for the presidency in 2024. The biggest controversy at the start of his candidacy is that Dr. West has stated
he is running as a People’s Party (MPP) candidate. He’s not
running as a Green Party candidate or as an independent but as a
candidate for an alternative party that barely exists.
To
say this has caused an explosion of conversation and cursing in
online forums where Lefties hang out is an understatement. Dr. West’s
decision to go with the MPP is being questioned on several levels.
Does he realize that the MPP doesn’t have ballot access (or even
statewide organizations) in more than a handful of states? Would he
be open to becoming a “fusion candidate” that several
left-leaning alternative parties such as the Green Party US would be
glad to nominate, thus giving him broader ballot access and more
experienced organizers? Chris Hedges has said he’d speak to his
good friend about switching to the Green Party. Could we see a
West/Hedges 2024 ticket? We’ll see.
UPDATE: Chris Hedges did talk to Dr. West and he has decided to run as a Green after all! The West campaign website doesn't reflect this recent change in Dr. West's plans yet, so please be patient.
It’s
early days so
Dr. West has time to change his mind about running, or
he could simply
switch his choice in a party
and run in one with less controversy attached to it. The MPP has fallen apart
(in spite of its auspicious start with West, Nina Turner, Paula
Jean Swearingen and other big names supporting it) because of sexual
harassment and financial misuse charges brought against its current
chair
and founder Nick Brana. One would hope Dr. West would address the
harassment mess and that Brana would step down so West could run
without being associated with any nasty business.
Dr. West is a decent and compassionate human being. He might
actually believe the voting public will look past the inadequacies of
the People’s Party and concentrate on his message. One
would hope
that proves true, but for now… The
discussions and debates continue online. (UPDATE: Even with Chris Hedges talking Cornel West into running as a Green, things are still relatively up in the air and the discussions are ongoing. You're not going to please everyone, in other words!)
West posing with friends in 2017 (photo by author)
To
draw these seemingly radically different stories together—hazy, polluted
skies and Cornel West running for office—I’d like to posit that
only a presidential candidate of Dr. West’s moral caliber would
do anything worthwhile to end the reign of the
fossil
fuels oligarchs and help put our ailing
planet back on a path toward wholeness.
My
reasoning? The duopolists
take millions of dollars yearly from capitalists who
don’t
care about the health of the people or our Earth. (I
suppose these rich types expect a ticket on Musk’s or Bezos’
rocket to their “Elysium” in space once they’ve destroyed our
world.) Leftists
candidates like Dr.
West
would more
than likely put
the fates of the poor and working classes before the billionaires’
bank accounts.
During
a Cornel West administration, we’d probably
see action taken to convert our energy
grid from dirty
to clean energy sources, along with punitive measures taken against capitalists who don’t cooperate
in
these lifesaving measures. That’s why it’s imperative those who care
about their lungs, their family members’ lungs, and the health of
the entire planet leave the duopolists’ ranks and join with independent thinkers to destroy the corrupt, planet-killing system
currently in power.
With
cleaner skies, the end ofwars
for oil, health care for all guaranteed,
civil rights assured for the people, we’ll be singing:
Roll
out those non-hazy, crazy, lazy days of summer!
(*And
you thought I was done with the filks? That’s what a lack of
clean air gets you. Bwahaha!)
Coming soon, the first book from The Revolution Continues blog: The Little Red Book of Revolution
How can you get your e-copy? The easiest way is to subscribe to The Revolution Continues on Substack as a paying subscriber. Choose what level you'd like to subscribe at via the buttons on any post online at https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com
