Fascism and Nazism in the GOP Presidential Field

    In modern times in the U.S.A. the Republican Party is little more than an ongoing revolt against the United States itself.  This "revolution" could not continue without the billions of dollars pumped into the party by the Koch brothers and other GOP donor-class oppressors and exploiters of the American people.  The Republican Party could easily go the way of the Federalists, the Know-nothings, and the Whigs.  Sure, it has something of a mass base even today in the evangelical churches of the South and rural America, and in the country clubs. It has some Washington think tanks and lots of gerrymandered bogus powers. But the contradictions between the Republican warmongers, holy rollers, bigots, and legions of the greed worshipers, could easily be used to tear this party to pieces. And good riddance! The current presidential field has revealed the maleficent pernicious nature of the elemental intrinsic character of what this political party has become. While the fascist rhetoric of Trump and Cruz could not be more obvious, the history of union busting, oligarchy, and austerity is common cause to most all modern republican candidates.

     The Democratic Party could have, and chose not to really take the Koch party down simply by denouncing their policies and candidates for what they actually are instead of pretending they and their policies were actually some sort of reasonable discourse in polite debate... which is absolute rubbish.  This may be a moot point, because right now we seeing the GOP destroyed from the inside.   
     Donald Trump, who has been compared by conventional republican power brokers both to a wrecking ball, and to Samson bringing down the temple of the Philistines on the heads of the tenants has made it all too apparent what the Republican base is all about in reality. Out and out Fascism.

    By rights, the GOP ought to be a regional party in the deep South, rural America, and the sparsely populated intermountain West. They must never, ever, be allowed to elect another president again. As such an election would certainly lead to a packed Supreme Court, the busting all remaining unions, impose suicidal budget cuts, and set up a permanent austerity dictatorship in which the right to vote of any possible opponent constituencies would be severely limited.
      This is the golden ticket promised by Trump’s outrageous demagogy. The Republican Party today stands as a roadblock on every avenue of American national progress. The very existence of this party is frankly intolerable, and a threat to everyone’s lives, and those of their children and grandchildren.

   Frankly, if the Republican Party could undergo even a partial collapse, the political climate of the United States would revert to a more normal ideological pattern.
If the Republican Party were to dwindle into a gaggle of regional racists and bigots, the Wall Street faction of the Democratic Party would soon find itself in increasing conflict with the residual but still quite present New Deal or pro-labor Democrats. If the two factions which are latent but observable inside the Democratic Party today were to break apart, this would be the easiest and most elegant way to get the United States back on track to having a functional economy and a just social-political structure.

Most any observer can see that Trump's atrocious characterizations of Mexicans, saying that he wants to shut down mosques and other Muslim religious centers, that he would create a registry of all Muslims in the United States and would ban all Muslims from entry to the country can be easily compared to Hitler’s Krystalnacht of 1938 and the Nuremberg racist laws. (Regarding Trump’s absurd demand to bar entry to all Muslims. How could this ever be enforced? By a new Spanish Inquisition? Trump's program could only be enforced by a suffocating fascist police state that would oppress all Americans.)

     The understanding that most Americans have of Hitler and Nazism tends to be rather reductionist, in the sense that it focuses almost exclusively on Hitler’s genocidal policies against Jews. However there is no shortage of other victims (Russian prisoners of war, communists and social democrats, intellectuals, teachers, trade unionists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and all political opponents in general). In reality, Fascism and Nazism represent a total world outlook, with atrocious implications for virtually every sphere of human activity.  In any case, shortly after the middle of November, many Americans were beginning to understand that Trump actually was at least a fascist, and most probably a Nazi. It is important to stress that the American people, despite their many flaws, have one of the best anti-fascist records in the world. During the 1930s, most countries in Europe, from Portugal to Romania, fell under fascist governments. Historically it's a good record. Even the Russians, who did the lions share of fighting the Nazis, as well as England & France had appeasement policies regarding Hitler at first. Though our record of fighting fascism is a good one, I question if we can discern fascism when it's rhetoric & symbols are adapted to appeal to American sensibilities. Which is why I feel compelled to write this. I'd like to think most of us do recognize fascism when we see it. Yet hope as Mr. Trump has said is for losers...he may be right in a sense on that count. Hope, in itself is a fine thing but it may not be enough in itself to accomplish anything...it takes some sort of action as well.

     Other aspects of  Fascism and Nazism  that many people are not aware of include a terrorist dictatorship of banking concerns and financiers. In a representative democracy where there is a Congress or Parliament, the question of fascism has arisen when the demands by the bankers for genocidal austerity against working people have become unbearable and intolerable, leading to forms of political resistance like mass strikes. In Italy, the financiers of the bourgeoisie, were terrified that the Italian Army had gone on strike and refused to fight at Caporetto in 1917, and became even more frightened when Italian workers occupied most of the industrial factories in the country in 1920, leading to a two-year working-class upsurge. So in 1919, the bankers and factory owners recruited desperate and demoralized war veterans (the squadristi) to work as scabs and strikebreakers, and also to attack the party offices and the publications of political rivals. In Germany the Nazis recruited similar goons, calling them the brownshirts, storm troopers, or Sturmabteilungen. We needn't stretch our facilities very hard to see similarities in the Trump campaign,  with many documented instances of protesters at his rallies getting beaten up by Trump’s fanatical backers. It is undeniable that Trump explicitly endorsed the violence from his bombastic podium.  In the case of Ted Cruz, we have a candidate who eagerly accepts endorsements and support from anti-abortion groups with track records of violence and even murder against physicians working at women’s health clinics, in particular Planned Parenthood. The summer of 2016 is shaping up to become an unprecedented festival of political violence in the U.S.

     Nazis, and fascists are also aware of the advantages of pretending to act within the confines of laws. Mussolini became Prime Minister with a March on Rome in October 1922, which had undeniable terrorist potential. It took the Duce several years to consolidate his dictatorship, a time punctuated by numerous political murders like that of Giacomo Matteotti who openly spoke in the Italian Parliament alleging the Fascists committed fraud in the recently held elections, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes.  It is often said that Hitler became Chancellor and was given dictatorial power by legal means. This is not accurate, since the vote on setting up a dictatorship had been preceded by the expulsion of the communist (KPD) members of the parliament. In France, the fascist Marshal Petain was elected dictator and the French Republic abolished by the vote of a few hundred senators and deputies in a theater in the resort town of Vichy in the summer of 1941, but there was never the necessary quorum. Mainly, Petain could lean on the German Army which had conquered France in six weeks. The appearance of legitimacy...to a degree.

    Fascist Economics- Mussolini and Hitler both did everything possible to drive down the real wages of workers and of the middle class.  This corresponds to a policy of primitive accumulation among the wealthiest and extreme austerity which loots and asset strips living standards and the real economy in order to generate monetary profits to prop up masses of insolvent debt. (Not unlike the toxic derivatives and junk bonds of modern Wall Street Investment Banks). For more information about Fascist economics, read about Hitler's economic adviser; Hjalmar Schacht.  Along with the reduction in real wages, fascism attempts to destroy labor unions, trade unions, craft unions, industrial unions, and any other organization attempting to protect working people. The early Italian fascists sought to wipe out every existing organization, including sports clubs, book clubs, ladies’ sewing circles, and all others, forcing their members into a gigantic fascist corporation. (Corporation in this sense does not mean the modern American concept of a joint stock company, but rather a medieval guild with master, journeyman, and apprentices all locked together in organic unity, denying any underlying class tensions.) We can say that just about all the Republican candidates are fascists in terms of their intention of driving down real wages and destroying the labor movement. The most aggressive in this regard are the fanatics of the Libertarian Austrian school.

    Fascism promotes xenophobia, the hatred of foreigners, and real or imagined territorial claims against other countries.  When Fascist promises of economic success don't pan out,  they generate enthusiasm through war hysteria. In today’s world, fascism anywhere risks becoming a path to a 3rd World War. Irrationality and the rejection of reason  is another tell tale trait of  fascism. Hitler relied on the myth that the Germans were  a race of supermen and  needed to exterminate competing races of subhuman individuals bent on the destruction of the superior species. Hitler told Germans to turn away from reason and think with their blood. Demagogy and hysteria based on these themes are found everywhere in fascism. Closely related to this, is the scapegoating ethnic groups in the wake of national disasters. Hitler’s original agitation at the beginning of his political career was focused on the myth of "the stab in the back",  which was a claim that the German army had never been militarily defeated on the field of battle, but rather only betrayed by cliques of liberals, communists, Jews, socialists, and defeatists in Berlin. This was called the Dolchstoßlegende, and it was the staple Nazi argument of the 1920s. Of course the German army had indeed been defeated in the field, specifically by the American Expeditionary Force in the battles of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne.  Trump’s stab in the back story is based on his invented account of Muslims in Jersey City cheering when the twin towers came down. This pseudo-incident allows Trump to argue that Muslims have received American hospitality and responded with treachery. This thought process is identical to that of Hitler.

    Fascists tend to be superstitious and invoke mythological ideas, ghosts, and spirits, they are inclined towards mysticism. (These aspects of fascist irrationality unfortunately find receptive ears among many Americans who are fooled by waving flags and the mention of popular deities.)  Fascism overall has an anti-intellectual tendency. Mussolini once told a journalist that he held educational programs in contempt, and did not want to have one, since the only guarantee of effective government was the power and determination of the individuals involved. Hitler made sure that the Nazi party program remained a neglected relic, and always tried to prevent it from being updated. For the Nazis, there was no difference between propaganda and university teaching.
You can see modern versions of this when Texas removes Thomas Jefferson from it's history text books, demands for creation myths to be taught in the science classroom are made, or the Koch brothers are allowed to choose political science professors at Florida Universities in return for making donations.

       Misogyny – fascists of all kinds hate and fear women.  Psychologists can spend entire careers on Fascist Dictators and their innumerable "issues". Trump may be the obvious misogynist, with unfiltered insults flowing daily about females in all walks of life, but most all republican rhetors promote the same inequality, maybe not quite as blatantly.

    Fascism also appears as the negation of parliaments and legislative processes. Mussolini called the Italian Parliament a cattle pen and pigsty. This is once again like Hitler, who never accepted the Constitution of the Weimar Republic, and got himself appointed dictator as soon as he seized power in January 1933. The way the US legislators have ignored the presidential authority of Barack Obama, pretending it is somehow illegitimate (despite being elected twice by significant margins in uncontested elections...I mean it's not like he lost the popular vote and was appointed by the Supreme Court!  :P ) smacks of fascism. Many of the promises of Trump and other Republican presidential candidates are outside constitutional authority. They either are willing to spit on the constitution...or at least the parts they don't like, or have no knowledge of it.

Libertarians-Fascists? A Strange Alliance.

First off we have to understand that Libertarianism was invented by the decadent Viennese Frederich von Hayek and von Mises in the service of greedy landlords and other bloodsucking exploiters.
(Neither of them ever seem to have held a single academic appointment that didn't involve a corporate sponsor). .Libertarianism was further developed at the London School of Economics by Sir Lionel Robinson. This toxic doctrine was brought to the United States under the auspices of David Rockefeller, who was so stupid that he needed to hire Von Hayek to pass at the London School of Economics. Von Mises was brought over later.
The peculiarity of libertarianism is that, while it is formally distinct from fascism and Nazism, libertarianism, practiced on a sufficient scale eventually destroys a society to such a point that the door opens wide for Fascism and Nazism...they become much easier to impose. The classic example is the German Chancellor Heinrich Bruening, whose austerity policies destroyed the German economic and political system between 1930 and 1932, leaving the country just a few months away from Hitler’s seizure of power when Bruening left office. There is unquestionably an affinity between fascism and libertarianism as seen in this example. Libertarians create the vacuum that sucks in fascism. We are seeing an appalling capitulation to Trump by leading members of the so-called libertarian movement. Republican operatives like Matt Drudge and Roger Stone are evidently attempting to incorporate large parts of the libertarian/conspiracy/fear porn/paranoia alternative media community into a kind of a cheering section for the fascist Trump. But many of that audience have been duped a number of times already, and might now decide to assert a different perspective. Let's hope so.
Is Trump a statesman? Is he the George Washington of our time? Certainly not. Is Ronald Reagan our greatest president? In no way. One would have thought that a libertarian might have come up with something a little more believable than "the Gipper" to usher in Trickle Down & Free Market Trojan Horses, but alas people fell for it . The political landscape is now filled with libertarian orphans who don’t want to go down with Rand Paul, and who may be eyeing the fascism of demagogue Trump.

After all this negativity about Trump, I must confess that I don't think he is any more dangerous than a Ted Cruz. Maybe less. However he is more obvious. He makes no effort to disguise it.



Sources-
The Nazi Hydra in America ... political science text by Glen Yeadon

how-the-money-power-created-libertarianism-and-austrian-economics/
  The Rise Of Fascism And Nazism
-http://www.academia.edu/11022950/The_Rise_of_Fascism_and_Nazism

Venice’s War Against Western Civilization

Appeared in Fidelio, Summer 1995

Verity, Verity, I say unto you...(Or Maloderous Maxims of Mystery)

Demographics would suggest that most non-voters would likely not support GOP candidates if they did vote. Reality may be altogether different though.

We all have truths, or beliefs at least that we adhere to.
I'd like to think that personally, when presented with new information; I would be inclined to adjust my beliefs to take this new information into account.  It would seem that I've had an epiphany of late regarding a long held belief that does not seem to stand in light of observable reality. This belief is a common one, especially among folks with liberal political sensibilities. It has a reasonable theory behind it...it is the postulation that most non-voters would benefit from Democratic policies, so if turnout were increased it would help get more Democrats in office. It's a common belief among conservatives too, as great effort has been put into suppressing the vote by the right. But let's have a closer look at what we know about these "non voters".  Empirical reality may be very different than the way we perceive it.

     As we can ascertain from the Pew Research Center data in the chart above, demographically speaking we might say that these were likely Democratic voters. However there are basically 2 kinds of non-voter. There are those who are the "meh" type, who don't care or know much about policies or how it effects them. And there are those who feel disengaged from the process for various reasons.
These reasons range from historical oppression, to viewing refraining from voting is a protest of some sort.  As we look a little closer at non-voters, this belief I (and many others ) hold about getting them to vote making a big difference in the outcome of elections may be entirely erroneous.

Eligible non voters numbered 80,632,506 in the 2008 election, a larger number than people who voted for either party. (59,934,814 voted for the Republican candidate, 69,456,897 voted for the Democratic candidate).

     Before digging deeper I apologize for focusing on American politics here, but the data I'm talking about is gathered about the U.S.  We can't assume it applies internationally, but it may or at least some of it may. You'll have to form your own view on that. 
     In 2014, research was conducted on political beliefs of non voters by PEW and they found that despite big differences in demographics, (most non voters are under 30, have incomes below 31K annually, and are  non-Caucasian), there wasn't a significant difference in the makeup of their political views from the actual voters. 

As you can see, the non voter's views on the president, and on both political parties seem to be divided about the same as the views of voters.

On most matters, the opinions are divided similarly among non voters compared to voters, or the general population. Except it seems we make assumptions that may not be so. We assume that these people would vote based on their stated positions. In truth one area they do tend to show a divert from the voting public on is actually knowing what is going on. (68% of likely voters have given some thought to the election, while only 13% of non voters have given any thought to it. 77% of likely voters follow public affairs while only 13% of non-voters do).
 

     Yes, I know that is rather disillusioning, and contrary to intuition.  I think we can all agree that many voters don’t fully understand the effects of the policies proposed  by various candidates or political parties. For instance in conversations I have had with the public at large, Bernie Sanders is often perceived as an extravagant spender while the republican candidates are considered fiscal conservatives, even though the republican tax plans expand revenue shortfalls, create deficits, and widen the income gap. (Historical fact)
     While Sanders’ proposed spending programs are demonstrably affordable and can mostly be covered by simply eliminating ludicrous wasteful tax loopholes

    Yet generally the  voter who primarily is concerned with balancing budgets is far more likely to support republicans than they are Bernie Sanders. They’re making this judgement on "folklore"   instead of doing the research necessary for a well-informed opinion. There are many issues similar to this where people’s stated policy preferences are not actually reflected in their votes.
Among women and black voters for instance, Hillary Clinton is leading Sanders although Sanders has a more vigorous concrete record of supporting policies that aid these groups, especially on the economic front.   If "voters" can be profoundly uninformed about which candidates and policies will actually accomplish their objectives, non-voters are absolutely less informed by their own descriptions of themselves in this research. This is reflected currently in the reality that non-voters are far more likely to support Donald Trump.



    So what does all this mean? Simply that it may be a complete canard that getting more people to vote would be helpful. because the assumption that non-voters would vote rationally does not seem to be true.
So what would be helpful? Better information, or better informed voters.
How is that accomplished?
Well, I think an independent press would be a good start.
It does not bode well for the "4th Estate" when it is primarily in the hands of only 4 or 5 corporate owners, all with socioeconomic and political agendas contrary to public interest.

It may be that the downfall of democracy and the advent of corporate oligarchy is not the fault of the non voter, but rather the fault of uninformed, misinformed, or under-informed voters.


All charts and figures are from the Pew Research site.
For further reading...
http://www.people-press.org/2006/10/18/who-votes-who-doesnt-and-why/

http://www.people-press.org/2014/10/31/the-party-of-nonvoters-2/
 

75 Years Ago John Lennon Was Born - Long Live John Lennon's Legacy

   75 years ago on October 9, 1940, John Lennon - musical genius and iconic spokesperson for a generation was born.  His musical legacy speaks for itself. But John understood the power of music to bring about positive change, perhaps more than anyone before him. More importantly,
John understood that his music could mobilize people to activism on behalf of positive causes.
John Lennon truly believed in the power of the people.

John earned the love and admiration of his generation. He did so by creating a huge body of work that inspired and enlightened. John did not use his celebrity for his own enrichment or self aggrandizement though. He used it to promote the concept of peace. He used it to promote social justice. He used it to expose "the establishment"...in his words "just a name for evil"...a monster.
In 1969 John said the monster was out of control.  I would say John using his position of fame as sort of a bully pulpit to promote causes greater than himself endeared him ever more to those of us who lived through these times.

John became a vocal proponent of peace and anti-war activist...alas also a high-profile example of the lengths to which the "monster", the establishment, those in power would go to persecute those who dare to challenge their right to control society.

For those who were not born until after this era; long before today's whistleblowers were being castigated for exposing war crimes or the NSA's abuse of it's surveillance powers.
Before Snowden, Manning, or Julian Assange were born,  President Richard Nixon & FBI director J. Edgar Hoover demonstrated the lengths people in power would go to in order to keep that power.
Long after John's assassination, it was discovered that the FBI had collected 281 pages of files on him, including song lyrics, a letter from J. Edgar Hoover directing the agency to spy on the musician, and orders calling on various government agents to stage a phony drug bust on Lennon.

We rightfully criticize domestic surveillance today as an invasion of privacy.
However, the US government's actions regarding John Lennon demonstrate just how easily  surveillance becomes an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power.
The 2006 documentary "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"  is the story of a man being harassed by government but even more so the story of a democracy undermined.
The grievances we have about government today:
  undue surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, racism, brutality, spying, political crimes, graft and coercion of policy by the corporate and the extremely wealthy., etc. were present as well in Lennon’s day.
They framed a basis for John championing social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
"POWER TO THE PEOPLE."  "GIVE PEACE A CHANCE".

I should mention that I am staunchly not against government, I believe democracy is good.
However as John once said “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.”

In December of 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., John took to the stage and sang“John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released. What John did not likely know was that that crowd in Michigan included many FBI agents assigned to "neutralize" him. They took notes on who attended the show and oddly their opinions on the artistic merits of his songs. The US government was spying on John Lennon.

 Lennon released the song 'Power to the People" and the album "Sometime In New York City" later that year which contained overtly political ideas in every track and depicted Richard Nixon and Mao Tse-tung dancing nude on the cover, it fanned the flames of paranoia in the powers in charge.

In 1972 Lennon planned to embark on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration. Nixon, fearing Lennon’s influence on about 11 million new voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.”

John of course was not the only one persecuted or harassed for his beliefs by those entrusted with government powers.  Pete Seeger, Pablo Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Lenny Bruce, and Allen Ginsberg all experienced the wrath of the established hierarchy.  Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin Luther King Jr. who had wiretaps and electronic bugs planted in his home and office.

King was kept under constant surveillance by the FBI with the aim of “neutralizing” him. He even received letters written by FBI agents suggesting that he either commit suicide or the details of his private life would be revealed to the public. The FBI kept up its pursuit of King until he was felled by a hollow-point bullet to the head in 1968.
Though there's no evidence John was blackmailed like King, he was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment .  The FBI file on John shows that memos and reports about the FBI’s surveillance had been flying back and forth between Hoover, the Nixon White House, various senators, the FBI and the U.S. Immigration Office. Nixon wanted him "neutralized". He wanted him deported.

Nixon’s pursuit of Lennon was relentless and based on the misguided belief that Lennon and his comrades were planning to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention. This paranoia was misplaced. While John indeed met with left wing activists who were on Nixon's "enemies" list, he said when they spoke of  riots he'd have nothing to do with such a thing.  He said in a 1980 interview in Rolling Stone, “We said, We ain’t buying this. We’re not going to draw children into a situation to create violence so you can overthrow what? And replace it with what? . . . It was all based on this illusion, that you can create violence and overthrow what is, and get communism or get some right-wing lunatic or a left-wing lunatic. They’re all lunatics.”

"WHILE THERE'S LIFE THERE'S HOPE"
As you probably know the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. But John was equally determined to resist, he fought back. Every time he was ordered out of the country, his lawyers delayed the process by filing an appeal. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle.
He said afterwards, “I have a love for this country.... This is where the action is. I think we’ll just go home, open a tea bag, and look at each other.”
Lennon’s repose didn’t last long, however. By 1980, he had a new album and plans to become politically active again. He was ready to cause trouble for the empire and the pharaohs once again.
 His final interview was on Dec. 8, 1980 and John said "The whole map’s changed and we’re going into an unknown future, but we’re still all here, and while there’s life there’s hope.”

That very evening, when John returned to his apartment building, Mark David Chapman was waiting for him.
John was neutralized.

You may kill a messenger, but not the message.

In his words, and his music he lives on
John spoke truth to power.

Yoko Ono said of John -
“A man of humble origin, John brought light and hope to the whole world with his words and music. He tried to be a good power for the world, and he was. He gave encouragement, inspiration and dreams to people regardless of their race, creed and gender.”

In conclusion, peace remains out of reach.
Activists continue to be neutralized.
Whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted.
Militarism is on the rise.
The rich have become unfathomably richer at the expense of everyone else.
Children still go to bed hungry.
Not much has changed since we lost John's voice.
I and I'm sure many of you joined with John in imagining.
Imagining peace. Fairness.
Of course it's getting more and more difficult to reconcile that imaging with the reality we experience. With the news of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital being bombed.

John's not here to comment. But I imagine he might say something similar to this.

“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make,
Something you do, Something you are,
And something you give away.”

“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy Birthday John Lennon.
Glad to have traveled with you!
You are missed.
Sincerely,
Your pals

Labor Day's Long Journey Into Night

Happy Labor Day!
Yes today in the US, we honor labor, and all the accomplishments and improvements to the standard of living organized labor wrought.
Oh...wait a minute. As I ponder what THIS labor day means, this year,
in this Orwellian Black Mirrored construction of a society,
in this monetized scalable time space continuum...
I see Labor Day online specials at Walmart “celebrate hard work with big savings!”
For the old fashioned brick-and-mortar shoppers several Walmart stores are open all 24 hours of Labor Day with low low prices. (You may recall this company is so famously anti-union that it shut down Canadian stores rather than allow the Canadian workers to have their union.)
The fact that Walmart “celebrates” Labor Day should elicit guffaws, belly laughs, derision, nausea, or at bare minimum an overt eye-roll. Yet somehow this does not happen, at least not among many.          Somewhere along the line, the meaning of Labor Day has been assimilated.

   Today the holiday stands for little more than the end of summer, the start of school, weekend-long sales on useless crap you don't need - ironically built in slave labor Meccas...
maybe a barbecue or parade.

The meaning of labor day was once of course conspicuously political. Yet today the politicians and commentators avoid any mention of organized labor when observing the holiday. Instead they may be compelled to give some obligatory abstract nod to that now defunct mythical cartoon entity, “the American Worker.” On Labor day you see, Labor isn't exactly celebrated...though a single day's break from labor is.  Now, that may seem to be a bit odd of a distinction to point out, or expect you to be concerned about. I mean Labor Day is really just about getting drunk in your yard, again. But that's precisely evidence of a very successful snowjob pulled on you, the American worker (or unemployed person, or underemployed worker, discouraged worker, or "grad student").
You probably don't even believe in a Labor Day any more than a Santa Claus.

The United States, as you've undoubtedly been told by sycophants and agents of our dark corporate overlords; is a very "special" country. Yes..."American Exceptionalism"...right.  Wasn't that a catch phrase a few years ago?  (A buzz-phrase of the now forgotten disgraced "neocons" who claimed that The U.S. was the only superpower left and should use that superpower to get rid of the world's opponents of American style vulture capitalism.)
Some allusion to a bizarre notion of our DNA somehow becoming divine and different from the rest of humanity? While I would not contest that societies do in fact all have some unique character culled from it's history or experiences; I don't think this is to be construed as having divine rights to dominate, manipulate, or dictate - which is generally what that phrase was designed to infer.

SO IS THE USA SPECIAL?
All nations are special in some way.
Actually as I recall the word "special" was used to politely describe the learning disabled back when I was in school. One example of this alleged " exceptionalism", or public relations designed superiority, is that we managed to actually deport the global workers holiday called May Day. 

Now this my friends... this was especially skillful,
because you see May Day began not in Russia, France, or Finland or Middle Earth, but in Chicago, ironically a major American city that was built specifically to exploit the labor of poor immigrants.
Yes, it was on May 4 of 1886, police opened fire on laborers who were demanding an eight-hour workday. They had been sent by their bosses at the slaughterhouses and City Hall to break up the rally and smash skulls of the workers. The chance to open fire on the workers conveniently arrived when a crude bomb was tossed in the direction of the police by persons unknown; eight of the usual local suspects were rounded up and convicted—four of them were made examples of,  slowly strangled in an intentionally botched public hanging, while a fifth condemned man blew off a significant portion of his own head by chewing on a blasting cap he'd smuggled into prison.
The phony trial had provided high octane fuel to the new global labor movement, and it inspired the creation of International Workers' Day on May Day of 1889.  Oh don't get me wrong, the leaders of other nations would've  killed off May Day as well if they could, but because it quickly had become entwined in the old pagan spring celebrations they just couldn't do it. Traditional pagan celebrations now included cheery mobs of laborers singing the ancient songs about smashing the systems created by oppressors and sawing off the head of some screaming king. It was far too appreciated by the celebrants who after dancing around the maypole and drinking everything in reach, tore off their folk costumes and paired off for the rites of spring like wood sprites in the forest.
Though it seems every now and then, these revelers would actually launch a real revolution, which is how we got the Soviet Union and leftists and all that sort of thing. 
Anyway, back in the U.S. shrewd U.S. holiday planners within the federal government were told by the  bankers and industrialists to find a way to get rid of this phenomenon.
They had watched with great interest as the Catholic Church tried (but failed) to steal May Day from workers by renaming it Saint Joseph's Day— ah yes...the mythological Joseph, the cuckold in the tale of Mary's supernatural pregnancy,  the patron saint of going along with the system that destroyed you and made you utterly dead inside. No small coincidence!
This sort of thing had worked well with other pagan holidays...after being unsuccessful with banning them, they learned to simply assimilate them and attempt to make them about something else.
  But for schemers back in Washington, the answer was to have a different kind of May Day—one that was more about sitting in the yard getting drunk, rather than storming the Bastille or seizing the means of production.




After U.S. marshals and soldiers slaughtered the railroad workers during the 1894 Pullman Strike, the federal government quickly whipped up a national workers' holiday. This "Labor Day," the first Monday in September, was preferable to the May Day agitations that called for worldwide revolt. The American authorities furthermore re-named May Day as "Law and Order Day," a daft but effective bit of Orwellian type propaganda that sucked the breath of life out of the stateside celebrations of May 1.
Consider that the commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre, on May 4, is now a fake Disneyesque holiday—May the Fourth Be With You  which celebrates the immense financial success of Star Wars products. Bah.



Labor Day worked out during the mid-20th century era of a prosperous middle class, a less desperate working class, and a fully marginalized poor.
But as a job that paid fair wages or included decent benefits went from normality to a rare prize won in a droll lottery by the fortunate, the hard-won eight-hour workday has become a morose sort of abstract mockery.
Now you see, at minimum, one of every three workers is in a "contingent workforce"—the exact number is hidden, because "the Labor Department does not regularly collect data about this group."(the last figures are from 2006)  It has surely grown exponentially since then.
Who are these folks?  Who are these "contingent workers"?
They're " temps", "contract workers", "seasonal workers", and warehouse laborers filling boxes for Amazon.
They're workers in service, retail, food production and dead-end office jobs.
They are stocking shelves, killing meat animals in a factory,  telemarketing, entering data, cleaning bathrooms, working security, etc. and they're  intentionally kept from working full work weeks, because only then would they be entitled to the benefits and legal protections reluctantly granted to full-time employees that organized labor had fought so hard for.

So ironically this year since Labor Day is one of the major retail sales weekends,
(along with the ominous Black Friday of the Walmart riots) with low-end retail being a round-the-clock operation,  the holiday will be celebrated by the 70 percent of retail workers kept as part-timers laboring away for oppressors as just another day of labor.
For the nation's worst-paid not-quite-employees, there is no holiday.

Retail, along with "customer service representatives" and "fast food preparation," is one of the top five "largest job growth" occupations, according to the Labor Department.
But don't even count on being able to have even one of these horrible jobs,
because even these are going away.
The burger-flipping robot and the self-service checkout computer are designed to kill off even the crappy jobs.

Perhaps the worst part of Labor Day, if you dare to think about it is that on the path we are on, essentially all jobs will be eliminated and probably in your lifetime.

The destruction of the labor movement has been remarkably successful, and three decades of aggressive anti-union propaganda has made the few remaining trade unions with their pensions and vacations seem decadent and greedy to people struggling with a shift at Booger King followed by a shift at the Malwart, forced to abandon children and/or elderly parents to be raised or cared for with whatever member of their casual family is without paid work of any kind.

Do you think you are safe because you've got a law degree?
Or work for an accounting firm?  Or manage some department?
You are not. 
There will be a management massacre to get rid of deadbeat white-collar workers just as there was a massacre of the blue collar workers.
You'll be told "those jobs will never return" as if labor policy were a force of nature like the tides rather than a man made construction.
Everything that anyone does can be done more cheaply by someone else somewhere.
No one is "safe".
When the bottom is finally found, when all production and services cost nearly zilch,
the next step will be to replace human slaves with machine slaves.
No it's not fantasy at all, the price of robots is dropping just as the price of mainframes plummeted 20 years ago with the introduction of cheap PCs.
The fast food industry alone plans to replace more than half it's human 'not quite employees' with automation in the very near future.

The next mass movement, if it ever happens, will not be about increasingly scarce laborers, but about the human race in general. Appeals to nationalism, oxycontin, despair, IQ lowering television programming, alcohol and slob propaganda have all done superb work in keeping the 80 percent of Americans who are financially insecure far too worn down and miserable to realize they've got a common enemy. If they ever should figure this out, there will either be the "class war" that worries rich liberals and rich conservatives alike—or the Pentagon (once charged with defending the citizens,  but now subservient to the dark corporate overlords who have used their wealth to purchase all policy making) will just have to poison the whole country except for Silicon Valley and Manhattan.
Enjoy your barbecue!

Postlude -
Is this the world that must be?
No, it is not.
But it is certainly the world that WILL be if we don't stand together and demand drastic change.
No dystopian vision of the future has come close to miserable truth of this self defeating reality. Greed, absolute, and unmitigated by any sense of ethical behavior, is not an inevitable master of mankind.
The interests of less than 100 individuals who already own most everything ownable in this world have no divine right to also own what little is left, what little is yours.
Politically speaking the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt must be resurrected.
Trust bustin' Teddy must be called upon once again...at least in spirit.
Monopolies are NOT in the public interest.
The idea that Global trade is merely about finding new forms of slavery is not legitimate nor is it inevitable.
A few pen strokes and the jobs that "are never coming back" magically do come back.
We used to protect domestic jobs simply by taxing imports that came from cheap labor countries.
Not only did the corporate overlords tell their servants in government to change that law, but they also told them to give tax breaks to companies who moved their production to China or other slave wage countries. That's right. You have actually picked up the tab for moving your job to China.
Suckers! Chumps! Unbelievable.
This idea that protecting the interests of citizens (protectionism) is somehow bad or impossible is an outright lie.
Global trade is nothing new, it's been going on for many centuries. But it was a matter of common sense that this trade was mutually beneficial. Trade is NOT beneficial (except to a very few) if the people in one nation  lose their jobs simply for very short term profits for a few.
It is not beneficial for the environment in a nation to be raped simply because they naively didn't have laws to protect it. This is not "free trade" and there really is no such beast.  What is needed is FAIR trade. Trade that benefits both nations in the transaction.

There is no inherent need to dismantle the middle class and toss the working people under the nearest bus. It's a desire of the few, who want what little that middle class has.
Unless we demand laws to stop the wholesale purchase of public policy making;
the few, the sociopaths, the insanely and cluelessly greedy will get their way.

 We can, and we must reconstruct ourselves.
We must do so or we will disappear without so much as a whimper.
The long term goal can and must be about human potential, not how much we can get for the chemicals left when we reduce the remains of human beings.
Labor Day began not as a national holiday but in the streets on September 5, 1882.
Thousands of bricklayers, printers, blacksmiths, railroad men, cigar makers, and others took a day off and marched in New York City. They carried signs that read “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will”,  “Labor creates all wealth,” & “We Must Crush the Monopolies Lest They Crush Us.” 
The underlying dynamics have not changed much. 

As for this year's labor day...
This weekend you could hardly be blamed for going to Walmart for the latest feather-light flatscreen television from China or Mexico. You may legitimately be dazzled by the low prices and pixel counts. But far better, go to a Costco, where workers make about twice the Walmart wage, and don’t have to rely on federal benefits like food stamps and Medicaid (which, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, cost taxpayers $6.2 billion a year...a corporate subsidy for Walmart).
In addition, Costco lets its workers unionize while Walmart instructs managers to report any union activity or grumblings about wages to the company’s “Labor Relations Hotline.”
But all of you Holiday shoppers will have to wait until Tuesday, though... because Costco is closed on Labor Day. Its workers will be at the family barbecue or the parade, celebrating a national holiday...where they should be!

Illusion, Order, Decline, Look A Squirrel! and Eternal Benghazi Investigations

 Mark Twain once said "Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either." This was a brilliant observation. Never more evident than today. Look around,  what shapes the society, the discourse (what passes for discourse),what force shapes the policies?  Is it intelligence? Reason? Science? Even a remote bit of sensibility?
Any honest evaluation concludes it is not.
No, most of what we see is conjured.
Fairy tales and legends believed so fervently that they are indistinguishable to the believer from observable objective reality.

From the Cold War that weapons manufacturers summoned up to drain the treasuries of many nations into their accounts, to the imaginative fallacy of "trickle down down economics"  that began our current downward spiral into crony capitalism, oligarchy and corporatism. From the lamenatble madness of preventative wars of choice, to the historical tragedy of twisting the motives of the founders of the USA into pious capitalists intent on establishing a (tax free for the rich) theocracy.
It's all complete Gimcrackery.
  It is all guided by ghosts, goblins, spooks, specters, and boogiemen rising from demon haunted minds. The same ridiculous magical thinking that makes for myth fanatics to see faces of their holy heroes in toast also forms our society, our policies, and perceived realities.
Our faith in easily debunked myths allows us to see salvation in a plastic cup of austerity, when objectively it simply does not exist.

What drives this insanity?
Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism, intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order and structure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, low self-esteem and anger over the 60s.
What?
Yes, anger about the 1960s.
In a nutshell, it is reactionary knee-jerk to the 1960s.
We have spent decades now as a society in a ridiculous political and cultural backlash against the progress, political upheaval, and cultural changes of the 1960s. The Reagan 1980s reflected a rejection of the idealism of the 1960s. With John Lennon dead, instead of "All You Need Is Love" we heard a new theme song designed by corporate muzak creators... "All You Need Is Greed".
In the 1980s as a culture we seemed to have decided we no longer found thoughtful musicians like Bob Dylan or Pete Townsend all that interesting and replaced their cultural importance with businessmen...the nastier and more selfish, the better. (Think of the Alex P. Keaton character in Family Ties, think of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho)...in this overcorrection, I kid you not the #1 bestselling advice book (in 1989) was titled  Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.)
The fair and the lofty were out. The cheaters and oppressors were in. The dreamers of dreams were fired and the efficiency experts were hired. While the 60s and 70s heroes tended to be natural, creative, and a tad dangerous... our new reactionary heroes were completely contrived and scripted, destructive, and selling securities. We rejected the well-cultivated wonder our regulated economy was in favor of a misbegotten deregulated illusion where very few are prosperous...but the handful that are take all.  No more shaggy hippies! No, we now want a sharp dressed man.
One who is self promoting, pompous, and full of ignorance and greed.
Instead of musicians with groupies, we demanded Donald Trump with whatever arm candy he paid for at the time.
Yes...it's true. We have no use for justice or statesmanship any more. Rather we demand SOB CEOs barking out nonsense...but with authority! It's no accident that Donald Trump should pretend to run for the presidency...he is the leadership we deserve. After all now we are broke, the sharp dressers own everything. They dumped their losses on us, raided the public treasury and moved it to tax sheltered accounts offshore...and a certain percentage are still jerking their knees, dislocating their chins...ready to trust another sharp dressing self promoting douchebag to run their country.
Yes...Trump really should be president. You get the leadership you deserve. We deserve no more.
We deserve a moronic narcissist buffoon, because friends, we have become a nation of ungovernable morons. We deserve Trump...in fact he is inevitable.

BIRD NEST HEAD

Today's Critical listen.
Preview of future music release by Ben New.
This is called Bird Nest Head.
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Best Indie Album Of The Year

First let's be clear about what this music is not...it's not about pickup trucks, booze in plastic cups, or lovers that treat you bad. It's not about anything normally discussed in pop culture. It's substantial. If you like a little substance in your music, you may find this to be just your cup of tea then. The music on "Western Front Of Dreams" has been described by fans as having elements of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp, The Beatles, 10CC, and David Lindley. It's meta-pop-rock...it's related to pop and rock...but not exactly the same thing. The key to really appreciating the album is the layers...songs all have layers to them both musically and conceptually. There is immediate gratification, but there are subtle hues and complete twists that reveal themselves only with repeated listens. Conceptually It's a search for some sort of detente where the matters of heart and the matters of the mind coexist precariously, but coexist none the less.
Ben New is indeed a masterful songwriter and performer with a unique style that fuses elements of seemingly diametrical concepts into cohesive and ultimately beautiful wholes. The lyrics are guaranteed not to insult your intelligence. The music is crafty and expressive, covering a remarkably wide range of genres.
You'll be treated to unexpected but truly satisfying orchestrations and arrangements with dynamic twists wrapped around surprising rich timbres featuring everything from banjos, to lap steel guitars, to wood flutes and melodica. Yet the guitar arrangements, chord voicings, and soloing are definitely worth the price of admission in themselves. Ben's virtuosity on guitar is evident even when not the focus of a piece. Be prepared for a memorable experience exploring this music.
It's deep and iconoclastic while remaining wholly accessible.
You can get yours at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bennew4
By the time this is published, the album should be available on itunes and Amazon as well.

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New Music From Ben New In The New Year!

BREAKING NEWS---New Album "The Western Front Of Dreams" just released.This is the most important CD of the year!Seriously, you need this!
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HAPPY WAR ON THE WAR ON THE ON THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

 THE WAR ON THE WAR ON THE WAR ON THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

I love the smell frankincense in the morning


By far, the longest running war, the War on Christmas...and all the counter wars against counter wars associated with this sordid affair is the most lengthy conflict in the history of mankind.  Its origins are sketchy, even among those on the front lines, but actually the modern conflict (though rooted in older events, Cromwellian and other skirmishes)  started in 1959 when the John Birch Society released a pamphlet called “There Goes Christmas,” in which they claimed there was a new communist plot to take the Christ out of Christmas and replace the baby Jesus with United Nations decorations.

 

In this enlightened era of course we know that it isn’t Communists or the U.N. trying to destroy Christmas it’s those vexatious, sinister, secular liberal types who are obviously the minions of Satan!

This holiday terrorism has been raging apparently during my entire lifetime and one wonders just what the effects the war has on everyday citizens.  I mean when one grows up in war, one becomes accustomed to it immune to it's horrors right?  I’m completely chagrined to confess that while my fellow citizens have been fighting this battle year after year neither my family nor I personally have  felt the effects. Why, there is a Christmas tree lit up right now as I type and no one has stormed in to arrest me or rip the tree away to taken it ( or me) to the public square for burning.  

The soldier's on the front lines, Christian Soldiers... Commander and Chief Bill O’Reilly and his Chief Propaganda Minister Sarah Palin have been instrumental in keeping the public informed on this matter.  I was astonished to learn there were two new fronts in the war, one on either coast. Not surprising, the coasts are heavily populated with the Secular liberals. Why they even have a glitzy interactive map that showed where every battle was raging!
 

 Apparently a new front line had moved to my own backyard, Teaneck, New Jesey.

Where for the last few years during the holiday season, Teaneck Township has had a menorah and various decorations and lights scattered around their town hall, but according to at least one community activist, they refuse to appropriately acknowledge Christmas. Christian Soldier Hector Ferrer has been fighting to get a nativity scene and Christmas tree displayed on the municipal building's property, but the township has resisted!!!
“The former city manager stated that it was too controversial of an issue,” Ferrer explained.
The township finally agreed a few years ago, but Ferrer said that it caused a very contentious relationship. The nativity scene was placed in a lower visibility area and the spotlight for that display was seemingly aimed away... and the Christmas tree lights allegedly burned out and hadn't been replaced in over three-years!

The Township has attempted to placate Ferrer with numerous excuses... first they said the nativity scene and tree were controversial.  Then they said there were electrical issues that led to the Christmas tree not being lit, however Ferrer took photos which showed that the lights simply weren't plugged in! To which the township has responded just yesterday saying  they have no obligation to provide any decorations or lights and these things just take time.

Wanting to get a firsthand look at how the war was affecting people I chose to venture there since there was no budget to go to the other front on the west coast.

As I ventured closer to the site of this latest battle I expected to see a city ravaged by intense fighting. I was certain to see hoards of out-of-work elves feasting on the carcasses of downed reindeer, the bodies of blow up Santa’s strewn across the road, their suits made crimson by their own blood; yet I saw none of this. In fact, everything looked normal; even festive. Every shop I passed had Christmas displays, Christmas lights sparkled on nearly every house even giant decorated trees adorned the malls and government buildings. How could this be, Christmas decorations in public? Were these people mad? Surely bands of black, gay, atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, Festivus worshippers would descend at any minute and destroy everything. I was beginning to think I’d been misinformed about the war for all these years

Yes, when I reached the front lines there in Teaneck my suspicions were confirmed.
The park was filled with people caroling, strolling with Christmas packages; there was a Santa on a skateboard....but there were no Nativity scenes. I asked a passerby what had happened to them and was astonished to hear that there that there had been a battle, a year or two ago, about having 14 Nativity scenes displayed on land owned by the city. OMFG!!! Was Fox news right??

I asked a passing stranger what had happened to the nativity scenes.
Were they fire bombed? Was baby Jesus hurled into the ocean?
Were the 3 Wise Men napalmed? 
“No, no, no” she responded.
“They moved them to the front lawn of the Lutheran Church across the street.”
Of course!
Well we do have a separation of church and state in theory
so that one group's religious beliefs can not be forced on another.
And to be fair, government; local or otherwise, really does have a responsibility to deal with other issues besides seeing to it that religious icons are placed about to the satisfaction of every citizen.

So this war really wasn’t much of a war after all.
No reports to be filed today from the front.
There is no front.
As I stood there puzzled, Christmas was everywhere I looked.
I couldn’t escape it. No matter where I went.
Even if I couldn’t see displays of Christmas I would hear the nauseating sound of the “Little Drummer Boy” droning on in elevators and supermarkets.
  Commander O’Reilly and Chief Propaganda Minister Palin were simply talking shit.
They were particularly incensed by people saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” Claiming that saying Happy Holidays pulls the Christ out of Christmas and infringes on the rights of Christians.
I always thought saying “Happy Holidays” was a nice way to include everyone, since many religions celebrate this time of year and for those that aren’t religious it’s a nice holiday as well.
Apparently however, being inclusive and pleasant to one another is unchristian.
The latest strategy in the war is for good Christians to shank anyone who says “Happy Holidays".

 In related news, the image of Cthulhu has appeared on toast.

 And...the image of Satan has appeared on Rupert Murdoch's head.

 As well as Santa!

In summary, it's a miracle...
not that these images appear to us on toast or grilled cheese sandwiches
...but that a species that is obviously so mentally deficient has survived this long.