ck4829
ck4829's JournalIs this a government that *won't* stop the carnage or *can't* stop the carnage?
And as long as Republicans are part of the two-party system and as long as "but we need 60 votes to do anything", then yes, I will say "government", thanks.
Starting to make me think though, there have to be other things they won't/can't stop that aren't carnage-based.
Like a movement to just stop paying medical bills or student loans for example? A movement against the very idea of cheap labor?
I present to you, "From Dictatorship to Democracy"
Maybe it's time to start treating the five of the SCOTUS, anti-choicers, the Republican Party, the "shall not be infringed" crowd, right-wing media, the Trump family, etc. as a regime of tyranny.
The things in this book could be applied to ANY government, but I've been told the game is over, Republicans have already won, the elections are rigged for Republicans, that nothing will work, why bother, why try, and that we're just a bump on the road to decline and fascism.
I, for one, refuse to believe that.
But we should have a backup plan if voting isn't enough, and the first ones espousing this should be the folks who think it's already over.
From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation:
https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf
A book that is banned in repressive regimes like Iran and Russia and its mere presence in someone's belongings is included as evidence that people planned violent uprisings despite the book stressing nonviolent solutions and rejecting violence.
This is from the section on "necessary sources of political power":
• Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
• Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;
• Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
• Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;
These groups rely on these same sources of power, no? They have the same potential weaknesses and they can be affected the same mechanisms of non-cooperation and defiance.
Time to start doing it.
It's all connected. I feel like if it's normal to say "Gun control won't work, don't bother", then..
It's probably also going to be normal to say...
"Disease eradication won't work, don't bother"
"Corruption elimination won't work, don't bother"
"Closing the gap between the richest and the poorest won't work, don't bother"
We're not going to be black-bagged and death squad-ed into oppression and tyranny, we're going to shrug our shoulders into it.
But hey, at least you have your guns
The Republican Party took away your demand to have a mature and responsible government.
Fox News, Breitbart, InfoWars, and Gateway Pundit took away your ability to be reasonable.
The health insurance companies took away your freedom from fear if you ever get sick or injured.
The worst white people told you it was better to side with them than with the 'other' and took away your community.
Right-wing religious leaders took away your money and your spirituality.
Shooters took away your kids.
But the mean ol' Democrats never came and took away your guns, so... yay?
I'm sorry, but I think the "victory" in the Cold War looks increasingly meaningless by the day
You've got a country that:
* Oppresses its own people
* Deals in terror against its neighbors
* Has a nuclear arsenal with a madman at the button
* Kills dissidents in other countries
And then you've got Kissinger saying that Ukraine needs to cede land to Russia and that we shouldn't be trying to humiliate the Kremlin.
I mean, to me, they sound just like the USSR, except, you know, not communist.
I get it; the west wants to save face, many conservatives want to preserve Reagan's legacy that according to them he was the one who struck the killing blow to the USSR, and Kissinger and others may want to justify the breathtaking human and civil rights abuses our country perpetrated in Latin America, Africa, and Asia and that the ends justified the means...
But it's time to face a hard and brutal fact:
The "victory" in the Cold War gave us an even more dangerous Russia... except, you know, not communist.
Always remember this simple truth whenever the right-wing mentions "mental health"
The "cure", according to them, isn't talk therapy, isn't understanding, isn't working against binary thinking and other perceptive errors, isn't anti-psychotic medication, but you know what it is? More marginalization, more isolation, more exclusion, more stigma, more shame.
It's time to start talking about... legitimacy
In moral philosophy, the term legitimacy is often positively interpreted as the normative status conferred by a governed people upon their governors' institutions, offices, and actions, based upon the belief that their government's actions are appropriate uses of power by a legally constituted government.
The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit consent of the governed: "The argument of the (Second) Treatise is that the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of the governed." The German political philosopher Dolf Sternberger said that "legitimacy is the foundation of such governmental power as is exercised, both with a consciousness on the government's part that it has a right to govern, and with some recognition by the governed of that right". The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset said that legitimacy also "involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society". The American political scientist Robert A. Dahl explained legitimacy as a reservoir: so long as the water is at a given level, political stability is maintained, if it falls below the required level, political legitimacy is endangered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political)
Who is consenting to be governed by...
The whack-a-doodle five of the SCOTUS that will say dreams are evidence and evidence of innocence is not enough for an exoneration?
Law enforcement authorities that will practically give MIT to investigate miscarriages but will throw an etch a sketch at those who want to enforce red flag laws and say "that should cover you for five years"?
The Trump cult of personality?
The own-the-libs people?
The "I read on Facebook that they are putting litterboxes in school bathroom" crowd?
The "Michael Flynn is a living martyr" types?
QAnon?
Who? Not me.
And no, this should be beyond elections. My preferred candidate, my party losing an election does not mean I consent to the above. I am withdrawing consent to the possibility of being governed by the above tyrants and murderers.
Astronomers are going to have a field day with all the stars we'll be seeing soon
As in...
"We have the greatest healthcare system in the world*"
* - Just don't talk about the maternal mortality rate
* - Just don't talk about the black maternal mortality rate in particular
* - Just don't talk about the medical bills associated with childbirth
* - Just don't talk about the early childhood death rate
Let's get serious. If you think women will be jailed for miscarriages, you're just overreacting
I mean, it's just ludicrous to think that...
Delaware may be the second smallest state in the US, but it's had some big problems with its drug testing lab. A scandal in 2014 revealed that employees at the state's Controlled Substances Lab were stealing drug evidence. The lab was shut down after it was found to be riddled with "systemic failures" including mismanagement, nonexistent security, and bumbling incompetence.
The fallout from that scandal continues as this week Jermaine Dollard, a man convicted in 2012 of supplying cocaine to a Kent County distribution ring, is free and suing the state along with several of its current and former employees. The reason for his lawsuit is that the evidence in his case—alleged to be two kilograms of cocaine—was recently retested (or tested for the first time, as no one is sure it was ever really tested before) and found to be powdered sugar.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/8qkxzv/a-man-spent-two-years-in-prison-for-cocaine-that-was-powdered-sugar
In December 2015, 64-year-old Daniel Rushing had just dropped off a friend at chemotherapy and was driving home an older woman from his church who worked at the 7-Eleven and would otherwise walk the 2 miles home.
As Rushing drove away from the convenience store, police pulled him over. The officer said he had been driving 42 miles an hour in a 30 zone and had failed to come to a complete stop before entering the roadway. When Rushing handed over his driver's license, Officer Shelby Riggs-Hopkins noticed his concealed-weapons permit. Rushing confirmed he had a pistol, and she asked him to step out of the car for her safety.
But Riggs-Hopkins had noticed some crystals on the floorboard of the car, and when officers used a field testing kit, the white substance tested positive for methamphetamine.
Orlando police sent the evidence it had collected from Rushing's car to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for further testing — which determined that just as he'd said, the white crystals were not a controlled substance. (Results did not indicate whether the substance was sweet and delicious.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/16/558147669/florida-man-awarded-37-500-after-cops-mistake-glazed-doughnut-crumbs-for-meth
What officials thought was $2M worth of fentanyl seized in a drug bust turned out to be sugar, a drug testing company said.
On July 13, three people were arrested in a drug raid, and deputies in North Carolina seized what they believed to be 13 pounds of fentanyl.
According to CBS affiliate WREG, the New Hanover County Sheriff's Office tested several samples of a powder-like substance that was found with a Scott Company Drug Testing CSI field test kit and determined that the substance was fentanyl.
However, when the state lab tested the powder again, they realized the error. Results from a private company, NMS, proved that the "fentanyl" was actually sugar.
https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/2M-worth-of-fentanyl-seized-turns-out-to-be-sugar-lab-says--492118231.html
... women who miscarry will ever be accused of murder, be convicted, be jailed, have their lives turned upside down by authorities in a post-Roe world with the best forensic techniques and most unbiased minds. Crazy. It'll never happen.
Never.
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