ck4829
ck4829's JournalThe right's love for the Putin regime is as important today as it was during the Obama admin
We remember them calling Obama a horrific dictator but then turn around and praise Putin for being tough and generally doing all the things they were accusing Obama of doing.
Why the love? Why the urge for a need for collaboration?
Illusion and delusion. The American right wing has created their own alternate reality that simply because Russia has cast off communism, that in itself means they must have become a utopia... binary thinking to be sure. You've heard sickening references with the glow of high grade polonium I am sure, I've personally heard right wingers talk about Russia having zero percent unemployment and a fertility rate that would put an army of rabbits to shame, all untrue. And of course never mind the facts of the corruption, the lack of freedom of the press, persecution of religious minorities, and more.
Neo-colonialism. A lot of them are practically salivating at the idea of the US and Russia joining forces to create an 'axis' against Muslims. Their perception is really that if we work together, we can have a great war; the white people of the global north finally destroying the non-white people of the global south, especially Muslims. Something for all the cuddliest people out there; racists, anti-Muslim bigots, investors in the MIC, people who want to bring on the end times, etc.
So we have work to do. Let's not attack Russian culture, but let's treat the Putin regime as illegitimate. An enemy of both freedom and the Russian people. Let's talk about Sergei Magnitsky, about MH17, about Alexander Litvinenko, and more. Let's call attention to ethnic groups in Russia like the Siberians, many of whom want autonomy from the Kremlin and are also concerned about climate change threatening to destroy their very culture and lives. And we need to find and pull in people opposed to Putin and Russian liberals, they aren't our allies... no, they are our brothers and sisters.
Maybe in a way, Jim Bakker is actually onto something here
In a conversation with pro-Trump “prophet” Frank Amedia this week, televangelist Jim Bakker proposed that “all the church people” band together to launch a “class action suit against them, whoever they are” who are “literally stripping the power from the president of the United States.”
Bakker and Amedia were discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Trump’s travel ban to take partial effect while they wait to hear arguments on its constitutionality, a case that Amedia insisted the courts “should have never even heard.”
“We were headed to having a president, a leader, who had no power,” Bakker marveled. “They were literally stripping the power from the president of the United States. If we would have had an army attack us, they want to take his power away.”
He then proposed a “class action suit against them, whoever they are, whoever’s taking the power from America because they’re destroying the United States of America.”
“They’ve unelected a president,” Bakker said. “It’s wrong! It should be a great crime.”
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jim-bakker-proposes-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-those-literally-stripping-the-power-from-trump/
Trump has revealed the danger of the power of the executive branch, it can be no different than giving a loaded handgun to a toddler. If there is protecting the environment, standing up to authoritarianism and bullying, and saying no to romanticizing war on one side and "respect for the office" on the other, then I'm not going to side with the latter, sorry. So yes, there absolutely should be an agenda from the bottom and from the top to strip powers from the President, it's time to crack the bully pulpit.
Multitask! (Just a little bit)
The problem is systemic and so the response needs to be multi-pronged. Voting and getting adequate representation is just one prong, but doing it alone will not fix the problem, we need real bottom-up resistance, things we can do, things we have to do in order to get the ball rolling for a real recovery.
Just some key things that we need to do:
Realize the full implication of Trumpcare, it's to help the people who already have capital at the expense of those who have none. Learn about preventive medicine and teach others what you can about it. Trumpcare will not save you.
On that note, we have to realize that healthcare in the US is less about prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of illnesses, injuries, and disabilities, but more about control; control of the 'wrong' people, excluding them, creating differences in class, race, and gender, and more. Spreading the word about this and finding ways to mitigate this control is vital if we want real healthcare in the US.
We need to fight against endangerment. We need to find ways to actually reduce the harm one encounters when one is unemployed, uninsured, or any other kind of 'un'. Fighting against disparities can start with simply noticing that they exist, this is something we can do too.
Think and act globally for a moment. Liberal Russians who are opposed to Putin and the whistle blowers in the molds of Sergei Magnitsky and Alexander Litvinenko, Filipinos opposed to Duterte, and progressive Muslims like Noor Tagouri, ISPU, and the MPV aren't our allies... no, they are our brothers and sisters. All three face erasure from authoritarians and fundamentalists and not to mention the last group applies to us as well, with the right wing saying "Cold War's over, new Crusade now!" If we're not pulling these people in with us and if we're not fighting alongside them in some way, then we're not fighting at all.
And finally, for the sake of this post, we need to look at the Executive Branch and the power it has. Trump as POTUS has demonstrated that maybe no one man should have all that power, and if the choice is between resisting authoritarianism, standing against bullying, saying no to romanticizing war, protecting the environment, and more on one side and "respect for the office of the President" on the other, we have to side with the former or what are we? We have to crack the bully pulpit.
And so much more.
The challenge is high, but so is the risk, but it can be done, even through just a little bit every day or if you can't then giving some measure of support to those who can. I just hope we are up to the challenge.
Land of Contradiction
For those keeping score at home, this is the world we live in:
Trump recently backed off a proposal of having a joint cyber-security unit with Putin, if it sounds crazy, let's keep going. This is a government that has affected our elections, has killed dissidents and journalists, fatally poisoned an ex-operative in the UK, invaded one of our allies, and that's just scratching the surface. This isn't about Russia as a whole, mind you, but Putin, his circle, and the Kremlin. On that note, can you imagine if Trump invited ISIS (Which will be known as Daesh from here on out) to a joint counter-terrorism unit? What about Muslims who have no connection to Daesh? Well, the right did throw a huge hissy fit when Laila Alawa was brought onto a panel for just that, they balked at that. Wonder why? Oh right, it's the same people who say we can't have a "cold war" with Russia, and we shouldn't, but yet apparently a new crusade is just fine with them. Because, apparently the hostile Putin regime is our friend, but Muslims who run the gamut from liberal to conservative, secular to devout, and who live, work, learn, and play here and as American as the rest of us are all worthy of suspicion at the least.
Moving on...
Seems kind of funny that after eight years of "He put mustard on a hamburger!! Aaaagh!!1!", "WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE?!", and "He said 'uh' in a speech! IMPEACH NOW!!!!1ONE!" when it came to Obama, we now have Trump, where scandals are explained away because "he doesn't know any better", just like a toddler, and he gets to hear he's doing a great job if he behaves according to the minimum standard and doesn't wet himself in public, just like a toddler.
Funny how that works, right?
So let's talk about those supporters for a little bit, the same ones who turn being 'anti-fascist' and 'anti-racist' into bad things, very bad things. But yet they are OK with the far right, you know, the people who watch The Purge and ask "How can we do this in real life?" They call us to account for the actions of every anarchist yet they have yet to respond to the cretin who shot up a mosque, or a bar, or the one who attacked patrons of a coffee shop with a hatchet.
And finally, let's not forget that if you're upset about the tainted 2016 election, you might be told to "get over it" by somebody who will ignore, enable, or even participate in rituals of waving the confederate flag but yet will stick their fingers in their ears and yell "La la la! Can't hear you! La la la! No political correctness! La la la!" when you remind them the south lost over a century and a half ago.
Oh well, what are you going to do, right?
Well, lots really.
Call attention to the contradictions, complain about them, ask irritating questions about them. Never let one of these contractions that we have now, and more we're going to see in the coming days, be OK with you. Resisting Trump means you can't ignore these or accept them as facts of life, you don't have to.
The problem with healthcare in the US is that, on the macro scale, it's not used for medicine
As in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illnesses, injuries, and disabilities; but rather it is used for social control.
Institutions in the US, from the government on down, use our healthcare system to:
Exclude people. Whether it's the 'wrong' people from care or the 'wrong' people from the profession itself because someone is poor or 'immoral'.
Blame the victim. Instead of treating people, this is where people are blamed for their conditions, happens everywhere from STIs to preexisting conditions.
Delegate morality. Where "lessons of morality" are forced down the throats of 'lesser' people, like with Chaffetz saying people need to choose between healthcare or an iPhone.
Polarize us. Healthcare in the US is used to create differences between class, race, and gender. Affluenza will never be a preexisting condition or put in a "high risk pool" and this is why viagra for men is cool but birth control for women faces more and more hurdles.
Coerce people. Notice the need to make employers the gatekeepers of who gets health insurance, you need to play by their rules.
And more.
Until this system is subjugated to a system where healthcare in the US is used for the purposes of medicine, there is no healthcare reform being done, and one might even say we don't truly have healthcare in the US at all.
Code Blue
"All writing is political" is something I've heard. Trump has ensured that all violence is political
When someone is shooting up a mall, a church, or a movie theater; and you have the POTUS with his finger between the "go ahead and tweet this" and the "cancel this tweet" buttons because he's waiting to hear if the shooter is a Muslim, then yes, there is a political layer here.
Trump and his supporters have created a narrative where it's somehow worse if a person shooting at you is named Muhammad rather than Adam Lanza.
This is the reality we live in today, all violence is now political.
It's time for the power of the bully pulpit to end.
Respect the office of the President? Why?
When the choice is between doing what Trump says or following his word and protecting the environment, standing strong against authoritarianism and bullying, not getting caught up in romanticizing war, and not enabling or normalizing the far right which very much wants to go to war against the 'other'; then the choice should be obvious.
It's time to break the Executive Branch's bully pulpit.
http://pulpitcrack.freeforums.net/
The curious thing missing from stories of Trumpgrets
Whether it is:
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/he-played-me-for-a-fool-kentucky-trump-supporter-laments-he-should-have-voted-for-hillary/
Or
http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/24/news/economy/donald-trump-voters-budget-cuts/
Are Trumpgrets genuine? Or will these people vote for the next candidate who is even Trumpier than Trump and who won't have the cuts coming for them? I think we don't need to focus on people who are just upset with Trump until we ask ourselves, and them, these questions of things I don't see in these stories...
Do they find the notion of a person being "illegal" now silly?
Do they see something wrong when a person says that "All Lives Matter" but then shrugs and turns away when a refugee needs help?
How many mosques have they walked into and talked with the people there? What do they do when they are confronted with the notion that Muslims are people just like them?
When someone says gay and/or transgendered people are "deviant" or "sick", do they speak up in disagreement?
When people who look like them and believe like them are in their company and they call people who look different and believe differently lazy who don't deserve government assistance but that actually they earned their government assistance for some reason or another, do they stand up and call that wrong?
Those questions reflect the distorted ideas that helped Trump get into office, there simply can not be a rejection of Trump until there is a rejection of those distorted ideas. If they reject them, then welcome aboard. If they don't, well, it would be foolish to enable them.
Play the new "Trump History" game
All you need is some people and a sense of humor.
The rules:
Name an event, invention, or other thing in history
Incorrectly, but humorously, associate the event with a wrong person, misplaced place and time, purpose of the event, etc.
Bonus points if Trump himself is figured in there somewhere
The person who names the event gives a point to the funniest answer
Example: Birth of Jesus
Mary and Joseph actually preferred the manger to Trump Tower, they also needed a place to bury Obama's real birth certificate.
Return of the Right Wing Infopedia
About a decade ago, I made a resource called the Right Wing Infopedia, planned to be a one stop place where one can get facts on right wingers and stealth conservatives, and it actually became something that was and is used by some people as a Google search would reveal. But I didn't have much time to truly focus on it and build it up into a major resource and something the right wing really wouldn't want the people to have. And I somewhat forgot about it.
That, however, has changed.
Today's world has seen...
My plan is to not only restore the Wiki, but make it a Wiki for today's right wing and the other forces that exist both inside and outside of them. And if you want, I can always use more editors, but please send me a PM here first instead of through the system first.
http://rw-infopedia.pbworks.com
Profile Information
Member since: Sat Mar 20, 2004, 11:37 AMNumber of posts: 35,057
